The Runic Edda
by Sigrunsdottir
Summary: Post Infinity War. Loki lives, but some other people do not. Soulmarks, space-travel, and stitching Asgard back together after it all. Plus vanquishing the new god of death—but that's more or less expected at this point, right? Tasertricks, Valkyrie/Sif, Thor/Jane.
1. Kaunan

_Author's Note: Hi all. This is a weird little fic idea I had in the wake of Infinity War, because I'm pissed at what happened to Loki. Warnings for major character death, violence, and citrus things, though this version will stay within the site guidelines for M-rated material. The smuttier version will be on AO3, when we get there, so read this if you want the cleaner one and that if you don't. Win-win. It's a slow burn, though, so be prepared for mostly plot._

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 1: Kaunan

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.20.2019**  
 **Location: The Reaches of Space**

* * *

Death comes not easy to the children of Asgard.

Even, as it turns out, the children who are not so much _of Asgard_.

Loki comes to against a blanket of stars, Thanos and his subordinates long gone from the ship, and presumably the ship itself long destroyed. He's been left for dead—again—and again he utterly fails to die. Not that he wants to expire; it's been a while since that thought crossed his mind. But as it turns out, _not_ dying is a rather painful process, one he isn't eager to repeat. Heedless of his wishes, the Apples and his magic have their effects, and short of worse wounds than a broken neck and being tossed into space by… _something_ , they will always restore him in time.

Time is just the issue now. He knows not how much of it has passed, only that, when he blinks a few times, trying to divine his location by mapping the pinpricks of light around him, it's been long enough to see him drift well clear of where he last remembers being. Well away from the last remnants of Asgard. Though they never held him in any great fondness, he—

It hardly matters now.

As soon as he's upright, Loki does the same thing he does every time he comes unmoored. He tugs up his sleeve, and checks the words. They're still there, in the strange, spidery print of someone who was clearly never practiced in penmanship, still the same night-sky blue.

 _Honestly, all things considered, that could have gone a lot worse._

Over time, they'd become the truth of his entire life. Whether he'd inadvertently shaped himself around them or whether they'd simply been as much prophesy as Soulmark is hard to say, but through countless scrapes, battles, ill-advised adventures, trials, and a fair few shenanigans, they've always held. Nothing in his life had ever turned out as badly as it could have, even the things that were not far from it. And though everything else is a tangle, in that moment he breathes a little sigh. Whatever Thanos has done, it hasn't destroyed everything. It hasn't destroyed the person who will one day speak those words to him, and the thought is more comfort than it ought to be.

Perhaps it hasn't destroyed his brother, either, but to figure that out, he's going to have to return to Midgard. Gathering his magic to him feels almost like coming home. Perhaps, he thinks, the closest he will come to that feeling any longer.

The grim thought is borne away by the urgency of another: he must find Thor.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 04.30.2019**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

Pop-Tarts, red beans, rice, some canned veggies… Darcy huffs softly and pushes a stray strand of hair out of her face, hopping to her feet and picking up the clipboard. Jane's trailer has enough stuff to last them a while food wise—honestly she's mostly worried about gas. Things have been… weird, in the few days since the entire planet had gone sideways. Functioning news media, which is mostly on the internet right now, is calling it The Vanishing, capital letters heavily implied, because all of a sudden like half the people on earth had just… disappeared.

Darcy's seen enough post-apocalyptic movies to know that pandaemonium was sure to follow, and unsurprisingly everything had fallen apart shortly after, mass chaos and panic seizing everyone. Looting and vandalism are everywhere, to say nothing of the physical mess: cars left on the roads with no drivers, entire industries shutting down, the government in a scramble to keep hold of what order it can.

And maybe, if anyone had been confident that they could _do_ anything about it, they'd have been able to keep things moving along while the necessary adjustments went into effect. But unsurprisingly, no one really had any _instantaneous mass extinction event_ backup plans, and with as messy as things have been lately, the U.S. Government at least is dead in the water. For her part, Darcy had immediately grabbed her boss, jumped into the nearest running car, and hightailed it back to the least-urban environment she had any familiarity with: Puente Antiguo. Jane's shiny new research fellowship at the Lick Observatory was just going to have to be on hold until the people in the tights made things go back to the way they were supposed to be.

"Dammit." Darcy pulls in a breath, trying not to let it tremble. She doesn't like to let her thoughts wander too far in that direction. But against her will, her eyes are drawn to her sleeve. She'd pushed it up in the course of her inventory, unwittingly exposing the dull, washed-out verdigris script that up until a few weeks ago had been a brilliant emerald green.

It's such a stupid thing to care about at a time like this. Half the world's population is gone, and apparently some crazy purple giant with delusions of justice and grandeur is the reason, and who knows when or if the superpeople would be able to make it better? Most of the world's remaining population probably have dead marks right now. Darcy had never _seen_ a dead mark before, but she'd heard about them, seen a few depictions in movies. Supposedly they get near to translucent, like a ghost of what they used to be. The description seems exaggerated, looking at hers, because it's still recognizably green, but she can kind of get why people would describe it that way even if it isn't literally true. It feels like something in her has dulled, too, been scraped out of her at just the _thought_ of the cosmic unfairness that was spending so much of her life waiting for the chance to meet the one person in all universe who'd really get her.

Who might even _want_ her. Possibly. The words themselves are— _were_ —kind of ambiguous on that point.

But she can deal with that later. Right now, she has a stressed-out astrophysicist to look after, someone who knows who her soulmate is, and who—despite the most awkward of all breakups—knows he's still out there, alive, and very possibly right in the thick of the danger. Who still loves him like the other half of herself, and distracts herself from thinking about it by working stupid hours and forgetting to do basic human things like eat and sleep.

And Darcy gets it, she does, because she's trying to distract herself, too, only her distraction is looking after Jane, throwing herself into _that_ work—the work of caring for another human being who needs her, and it's almost enough sometimes.

So she pulls out the red beans and rice and sets them down on the counter, taking a pot down from one of the hooks on the walls and filling it partway with water. She'll turn on the tiny burner on Jane's tiny stove in a little while, but first she needs to make sure Jane's where she left her. Checking the box of Wildberry Pop-Tarts, Darcy confirms that they haven't expired—she's not entirely sure Pop-Tarts _can_ expire. But there's a date, and it's in the future, so she opens the box and takes out one of the crinkly silver packages.

Fortunately, Erik's Pinzgauer never left the nearly-abandoned trailer park where Jane left her mobile home, and there's enough gear in it to satisfy Jane's need for work, when added to the smaller instruments she'd insisted they take from Santa Cruz. The eyewateringly-red pickup truck Darcy sort-of stole will work to hook the trailer to when they need to go, as they'll need to eventually if this lasts much longer, but she's not thinking about that either just now.

Jane's pulled several folding chairs out of the Pinz, and looks to be at work assembling… something. Darcy's not stupid; she could probably figure out which of their old pieces of equipment it's supposed to resemble if she bothered to take a closer look at it, but at the moment it doesn't really matter. Jane's hands and brain are busy, and that's what she needs.

"Janey? I brought… foodlike things." Darcy pinches the top of the package between the thumb and forefinger and swings it back and forth. The bright silver catches the light and Jane's attention at the same time, and the diminutive scientist looks up from her work.

Shit, Darcy needs to work harder on getting her to sleep. Those circles under her eyes are dark as bruises, and if the shape wasn't all wrong, it'd look like her boss had been in a fight and taken a matching pair of shiners for the trouble.

Jane blinks. "Are those all we have?" She sounds vaguely perturbed and her mouth pinches. "Sorry, Darcy, I'm not—"

Darcy shakes her head. "Nah, bosslady. There's a few other things in there. No grocery store raids in our future. At least not our near future. I figured you might want a snack, though."

Jane could live on the diet of a latchkey twelve-year-old and still look like a supermodel, which Darcy suspected she had been doing until they met. It was unsurprising she didn't know what was in her own cupboard.

"Oh," Jane says, nodding slightly as though she's not sure it's the right response. "Good then." She's eyeing the Pop-Tarts, though, and Darcy is not about to stand in the way of Voluntary Eating. So she tears the package open, holding it out to Jane, who pinches one of the pastries and tugs it out of the bag, dropping into the nearest camping chair with a sigh that sounds more like exhaustion than relief.

Darcy takes the other Pop-Tart and the other chair, breaking the rectangle in half and biting down. She'd _been_ a latchkey twelve-year-old once. Not like she was gonna turn her nose up at processed sugary goodness, even _if_ she could cook.

"Anything new on the news?" Jane asked around a mouthful of Pop-Tart.

Choosing not to poke fun at the redundancy of the sentence, Darcy shrugs. "Dunno—I've stopped reading. I figured if I saw one more article making wild guesses about which of the Avengers are dead, I'd kinda…"

She doesn't finish the sentence. Jane doesn't need her to. Both of them glance at the crimson script looping over the inside of her forearm, exposed by the t-shirt Darcy had bought her for her last birthday: a plain grey one with SCIENCE RULES scrawled over the front in white letters. Darcy wonders if Bill Nye has disappeared for all of a moment before Jane shifts her arm.

 _You! What world is this?_

Despite herself, Darcy smiles at the memory, pulling in a breath. The air had tasted a lot like this, that night. Shifting her eyes to the horizon, she notes the incoming thunderheads—and damn if that's not a little _too_ on the nose right now. Well, it'll make for a plausible excuse to force Jane inside for a few hours, at least. The storms tend to be spectacular here in the desert, if rare.

She takes another bite of her Pop-Tart, suppressing a strange longing she can't quite name.

"Hey, Darce?" Jane's looking at her now, dark eyes big and wide and vulnerable.

Darcy swallows. "Yeah, Janey?"

"Do you think—" Jane catches herself; shakes her head. "Never mind."

Darcy knows what she means anyway. "I dunno. But no matter what happens… you know I'm gonna be here, right?" It's not much to offer, really—Darcy isn't that much help with the science, or the loneliness. An intern-slash-friend is a poor substitute for a Soulmate, and damn if her heart doesn't twinge a little even thinking about the word. She hasn't told Jane about her mark; her sleeve covers it now and will at least until all of this is settled. If it's ever settled.

"Yeah," Jane says, and it's soft enough that Darcy thinks maybe the reassurance means something after all. "Yeah, I do."

* * *

Darcy spends a few more minutes outside with her, long enough for the both of them to finish their Pop-Tarts. Then she crinkles the wrapper loudly and stands up with a huff and a bounce. "Well, back to work, I guess. Dinner in a bit, Janie."

Jane's never really been fond of diminutives. She's spent too much of her life just trying to be taken seriously. But from Darcy, it's affection, and she never has to wonder about whether her former intern takes her seriously anymore. Not after the furious email to the New York Times editorial department that she wasn't supposed to know about.

A tiny smile turns the corner of Jane's mouth, and she leans back into the chair. The magnetometer still needs work, but for the moment the desire to keep busy has abandoned her. Jane knows she's wallowing a little, and knows it's not good for her, but the scientific consensus on the matter is clear: Soulbonds have all kinds of effects on the limbic system, including the well-documented Tergiversation Effect. A different kind of discomfort from Darcy's Sehnsucht Effect, and… reversible. Maybe.

Thor's still alive, after all. Still out there somewhere. And not a day goes by when Jane doesn't wonder what would have been if they'd both tried just a little harder to make things work. Having, as Darcy had once put it, a _manic thunder dream god_ for a counterpart did… complicate things, and honestly Jane prefers everything simple but her astrophysics, because work is intricate and complicated enough on its own.

Slouching down in her chair, she lets the back of her head rest against the edge of the canvas so she can study the sky with nothing but her naked eyes, watching the last light of the day dim and the storm approach. She never sees dark clouds the same way as she used to anymore. Never will again, in all likelihood.

Jane loses track of how much time passes as the storm approaches, lightning lancing between the clouds, lighting the sky with the raw magnificence that will always belong in her head to _him_ , and though her inner feminist finds something deeply objectionable about offering up _prayer_ to someone she needs an _equal_ relationship with, part of her reasons that he's a _god_ , after all, and if there's a chance it could reach him, then she'll take it.

So, feeling a little silly and skeptical, Jane reaches out into the universe and tries to make her heart known over all the space between them.

 _Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be safe._

Almost as soon as she's let the thought loose, a bolt of glistening lightning strikes the ground, not twenty feet from the trailer, and Jane yelps, half-jumping, half-falling out of her chair, saved from an ungainly sprawl on the ground by the magnetometer, which she uses to steady herself. She can hear the heavy drum of Darcy's footsteps inside the trailer as she runs to the door, but everything else fades from her awareness, her focus narrowing down to one single spot in front of her.

"Jane."

Though the distance between them is meters, the low rumble of Thor's voice is almost as intimate as if it were inches, and Jane pulls in a sharp breath, her throat constricting. The bond tugs at her, urging her forward a few staggering steps before she's even realized what she's doing, and for all his might Thor is just as trapped by it as she is. He steps forward too, and the distance closes until it's feet, until she can just barely feel what has to be the heat of his body.

And then they both stop. Both cautious. Both, no doubt, mindful of the fact that she is the one who ended what was between them, and she who must lower the wall that has been raised.

What a stupid way of speaking. Ended it. As though a Soulbond can be ignored so easily. Disregarded, abandoned. As though the parting did anything but make her miserable, and every bit as in love with him as she'd been that first heady weekend, here, years ago.

She swallows thickly. "You cut your hair," she says lamely.

Nobel-prize-winning astrophysics phenom, ladies and gentlemen.

And still a blithering idiot in the face of something that can't just be _simple_.

Thor grimaces slightly, but his eyes don't leave hers. "Not voluntarily." The words are quick, impatient. He doesn't care.

She doesn't care, either. She's just not sure she can say any of the things she _does_ care about. His eyes are too heavy, too intense, the blue of them perfect and clear and almost as pale as the lightning.

"So, uh… I guess I'm making like… triple the food now, huh?" Darcy—wonderful, irreverent Darcy—saves Jane from gaping awkwardness by dint of sheer pluck, leaning out from behind the half-open trailer door and grinning brightly at Thor, one dark eyebrow arched. All of a sudden, the unbearable tension lightens just a little.

Not even Thor can remain entirely serious in the face of that, and he has mercy, too, turning to Darcy and smiling broadly. "I should relish the opportunity to sample whatever Midgardian delicacy you've the inclination to prepare."

Darcy laughs, because he plays his unusual diction up a few notches beyond normal, something he knows delights her. "Well, I can't promise anything fancy, but come on in, big guy. You, too, Jane."

Jane can only nod, smiling thinly at Thor when he holds the door of the trailer open and gestures her up in front of him.

* * *

Darcy shovels another spoonful of red beans and rice into her mouth, eyes darting between Jane, barely picking at her food, and Thor, inhaling it like it's the best thing he's ever tasted. And take that, stereotypes—there's not a bit of meat in it, and the viking space prince likes it just fine.

Or maybe he's doing what she's doing and eating so much so he has an excuse not to talk.

It's painfully awkward, here at the tiny kitchen table in the trailer, the three of them packed in so close that one of Darcy's knees is touching Thor's and the other Jane's. Its mostly his fault, since neither of the women takes up much space, but it's not like he can help being huge, so Darcy doesn't hold it against him. He arrived in full armor, but he's at least shed the boots and bracer-thingies now, so it's a little less surreal.

Oh, who the fuck is she kidding? This will never _not_ be surreal, but it's also her life now.

Neither of these two idiots is going to say anything first, Darcy can already tell. As much as she loves the stuffing out of both of them, the actual number of days they've spent together is way out of proportion with the strength of their bond, and she can kind of see where that would be awkward. To just… feel that much stuff for someone who's still a stranger in a lot of ways. She bets it takes a lot of time to get to know a guy who's thousands of years old—or to adjust to interacting with someone who to you is an alien and has a weird way of speaking and thinking and enough brainpower to connect the realms with puny mortal resources.

"So, dude. Not to like, harsh the mellow here or whatever—" Darcy valiantly avoids laughing at her own words, because there isn't _any_ mellow in this room, and she's the only one faking it—"But, uh… it's been a while since we had the first clue what's going on out there." She's glad Thor's alive. Beyond glad. But that doesn't mean the world's not on a precipice right now, doesn't mean there's not still some crazy grape-crush supervillain out there who can apparently just obliterate people without being anywhere near them.

And the truth is she's scared of that, at least as far as she can even process it at all. Some reassurance would go a long way right now.

"Aye," Thor says softly, staring at his plate without quite seeing it. "It is a long tale, Lady Darcy, and little of it amusing." His grip tightens on his fork, and for a moment she worries he'll bend it out of shape. Not very many things on this planet are made for people as strong as he is.

But he tells them. About Ragnarök and Hela, Asgard's destruction and the death of his father. About Dr. Banner and Loki, who was alive and then dead again as soon as it finally seemed like everything was going to be all right. About how he'd planned to bring his people to Earth for refuge. Darcy suppresses a comment about Earth's track record with refugees, because even she can tell it's the wrong thing to say right now, and god-powered refugees that pretty would be a different thing anyway.

About myeuh-myeuh—she's learned how to say it right but prefers her version—and the forge, and his near-miss with Thanos. It's almost too much; even to Darcy who knows what's out there now, it sounds like nothing short of a fairy-tale. But it's not. She can read it off his body language. Thor doesn't look quite defeated, but he's got that resignation to him. His shoulders are slumped, rolled forwards and burdened. The weight he's under is getting to him, and Darcy wishes she had the words for that, because even if she wants to be reassured she can see now that Thor needs it more.

Too bad there's not enough certainty and assurance to go around.

"Tomorrow," Thor says, after the silence sits for a while longer. He scrapes the last of his food into his spoon, chews it mechanically, swallows. "It's the last chance. Those of us who are left—there's a plan, but it has to be tomorrow."

And suddenly, Darcy understands what this is. She reaches over, clapping Thor on the shoulder with what would be too much force for anyone else, but is just enough to be hearty to him. "So I should make something super-fancy for tomorrow night, is what you're saying?"

He smiles, but it's strained. His other hand has shifted under the table; Darcy sees Jane shift just enough that it's easy to tell she's holding it.

"Hey," she says. "You're gonna be fine, dude. We all are. You'll see." She stands, gathering the dishes, but only rinses them and sets them in the sink for now. It's obvious the two of them still have a lot of talking to do—and probably some other stuff. "Jane, I think I'm gonna grab my sleeping bag and camp out in the Pinz tonight, 'kay?"

"You don't have to—" Jane's quick to say the polite thing, but Darcy can read a room and shakes her head, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"No worries, bosslady. It'll be like old times." Thor stands too, and they enfold each other in a hug. He holds a little tighter than is comfortable, but she doesn't complain. Hell, she holds him pretty tightly, too. Thor's her friend, weird as that is, and Darcy's no fool. Despite her words, well… who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Her purple sleeping bag under her arm, she exits the trailer, opening up the back of the van and crawling in. There are a couple pieces of equipment in it, but Darcy's small, and rude enough to move them to the side anyhow. She lays on her stomach, then flops to the side when that gets uncomfortable. Soon, always—damn her body shape.

And because it's the last night she might ever have, she holds her marked arm to her chest and stares at the dull letters until her eyes blur and spill over.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 05.01.2019**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

Darcy is woken by a broken wailing sound, and dread fills her heart.

Jane's Soulmark has faded until it's almost invisible against her skin.

The news reports say that The Vanishing has been undone.

Darcy's mark does not return.

* * *

Thoughts much appreciated. I'm not new to fanfic, but I'm new to romance-focused writing, and to writing in this fandom. I'll be playing fast and loose with broader 616 canon as well as mythology, but this should ideally be totally or mostly MCU-compliant up to and including Infinity War.


	2. Ingwaz

_For the first and last time, a disclaimer: I disclaim. I use the intellectual property of Marvel/Disney/etc in accordance with "fair use" exceptions to copyright law, and all that jazz. Please don't sue me, cause I'm broke._

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 2: Ingwaz

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.21.2019**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

Loki has long learned his lessons in discretion.

His first day back on Midgard, he lies low and observes. There is no shortage of breathless speculation about the fates of the _Avengers_ —and he tries not to taste bitterness like bile when he thinks of them, truly he does. Hard facts are in shorter supply. As someone who leans heavily on grey areas to accomplish his deceptions, he knows quite well the value of more solid sorts of truth, and seeks them out.

He will _not_ believe that Thor has gone ahead of him to the afterlife until his proof is incontrovertible. He _cannot_.

The agents of whatever limping bureaucratic nightmare used to be SHIELD seem a fine place to start, but even they still scramble, both to discover and to contain, and after a while he grows bored of watching them. They've no more evidence than the amateur gossip-mongers who ply their trades on television. Such a strange institution—journalism, he knows it is here called. Perhaps in time these journalists would fetch the right information, the proper evidence, but this matter is too important, and Loki's patience is stretched too thin to accommodate.

He must know the fate of his brother. The fate of Asgard.

From here, there are two obvious options: the Man of Iron's tower, or the residence of Thor's Midgardian paramour. Either seems likely to yield him the information he seeks. One would be infinitely simpler to check. The only possible difficulty might be actually _locating_ the woman, but in that respect, he knows at least where to start.

* * *

He has only ever seen this settlement through the Destroyer's eyes, and it is no more impressive to him now. There is almost nothing to speak for it: it is but a central block with a few clustered buildings. A fueling station for automobiles, a trading post for foodstuffs, another for small animals, what seems to be an empty building on a large concrete lot—perhaps formerly for the purveyance of the automobiles themselves—a pub, and some sort of single-level municipal building he does not care to identify the purpose of. The rest of the town, such as it is, lies scattered about; no doubt mostly residences and places to feast.

Loki, of course, has outfitted himself appropriately—or mostly appropriately, at least. In retrospect, the unbroken black of his bespoke suit cuts a hard line against the soft browns and washed-out red-grey of the town, as though everything is blanketed in dust and choked by oxidation.

It is no sooner than he lands that he feels… something. It is not quite his brother, but something similar to the way Thor's magic felt against his senses. Limited though its applications are, the traces of life and lightning in his brother's very _hugr_ leave a distinct and powerful impression—Loki can almost taste the ozone on the back of his tongue.

It is pointing him westward, away from the main body of the hamlet.

He follows.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.22.2019**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

Darcy's spoon hangs limply between her lips, all but forgotten. On the tiny television screen she's pulled down from the trailer ceiling, MSNBC's news ticker proclaims, in all capital letters, the defeat of Thanos, and the pyrrhic success of the Avengers. The footage is difficult to watch, which is why she's waited for Jane to head out on a grocery run before daring to turn it on.

There isn't a lot, and most of it is hazy, the angles switching back and forth as cameras are smashed or reporters take cover. Like so many other battles, it destroys everything around it, ranging over a dense metropolis this time, because things like this always gravitate to cities for some reason. They can't contain it to a single field in Wakanda anymore, though frankly Darcy thinks Wakanda has been though a lot recently, so maybe that's only fair.

Watching the Hulk smash through entire buildings only to be flung away like he's a giant green ragdoll is… disconcerting. Surreal. The property damage, the damage to the Avengers, is something she sees but cannot quite _grasp_ , the kind of carnage that can only be fathomed as numbers and intellectual acknowledgement because to really _feel_ it would break something in her she has to protect. It still aches.

The Hulk footage is the clearest anyone has, but in the weeks since the fight, more information has filtered in, the world's collective journalistic drive and paranoia ensuring it. Conspiracy theories and wild speculation are everywhere, but eventually the facts emerge:

1\. Thor is dead.  
2\. Tony Stark, War Machine, that Spiderman guy, and King T'Challa are definitely alive.  
3\. The rest of them seem to be missing.

Darcy knows just from hearing the tone of the newscasters' voices that it's the kind of _missing_ where they probably won't ever be found. She swallows, reminding herself of the spoon, and grabs hold of it by the handle, dipping it back into her soggy cereal and making a face. Some of them probably wouldn't want people to know even if they _are_ alive; the whole Accords thing is still such a hot mess she figures the the more secretive types and the former "we need independent power to act" team might not want to tell people if they're still around.

But even with all those factors accounted for… there's just no way all the missing miraculously made it, and she knows that.

It's not like she knew any of them personally, except Thor, but… shit. Darcy had always firmly been Team Spandex in the fight between them and the terrifying knowledge of her own mortality. Knowing that people like that were out there—even if they were mostly just humans with some upgrades and probably a truckload of issues—made her feel safer. At least from the world-swallowing aliens and mad titans and shit.

Now, though, she has to wonder. What if there's something else out there? The glove or whatever Thanos had been using is apparently wrecked—Thor's handiwork. But a hostile force wouldn't need something like that to obliterate humanity; it's overkill, honestly. What if something else comes for Earth, and it's still so… defenseless?

Shaking herself, she stands and heads to the sink, dumping the rest of her cereal and washing out the bowl and spoon. And Thor—she'd been so stupidly optimistic. But Jane's mark is even more faded than hers. He isn't here anymore, and Jane's only just _barely_ starting to function again. Setting her dishes on the drying rack, Darcy flips the TV off, letting the silence settle for several long moments.

Her arm itches. She's not sure if that's psychosomatic or not, because it's been itching for a couple of days now, and she almost can't bear it anymore. She also can't bear to _look_ at it, so for all she knows she has a terrible rash under her sleeve or something, but Darcy knows she sure as shit isn't going to look right now. She'd given herself the one night to lose her cool, but then the morning afterwards _Jane's_ mark disappeared, and you can't really miss what you've never had anyway, right?

Nothing is right. Maybe nothing will ever be right again, even when the rest of the world manages to sort itself out.

The dishes are washed, the tiny trailer bathroom is clean—hell, she even made her bed. Apparently the pressing need for distraction turns Darcy into a domestic goddess.

Poor choice of words.

Fortunately, the fact that she's out of things to clean and organize isn't too much of a hindrance, because Jane comes tromping up the steps then, a reusable grocery bag in each hand, and that's her cue.

There's only another couple of bags in the truck bed, and Darcy hauls them out easily. Score one for lugging around all of Jane's heavy shit. She's trekking back up to the trailer when she feels an uncomfortable prickle on the back of her neck. Years ago, when she was still a dumb college student without a clue, she'd have thought nothing of it. But after everything—well, even if her instincts are just normal human ones, she's learned to mind them.

She pauses, turning halfway back to scan the lot behind her. There aren't too many people in the trailer park; Puente Antiguo is a one-stoplight kind of town, and most people live on the north side instead of out this way. None of the few around are visible. Most of them don't come out of their places except to go to work or out for errands, as far as Darcy knows. And it's not Mrs. Ramirez out poking at the single flower-box she calls a garden, either. Darcy's eyes narrow, looking for anything out of place.

Nothing.

Pursing her lips, she picks her feet up just a bit faster and resolves to sleep in the trailer tonight instead of the Pinz. Just in case.

Jane seems to have disappeared into the bathroom, so Darcy starts stowing the food, which is kind of like playing Tetris, only not nearly as entertaining. Maybe she should pull out Jane's Atari and volunteer to get her ass kicked tonight. It could be a good distraction for the both of them. And maybe she could make brownies or something. There's probably not any caramel in these bags, but—

Darcy's fingers alight on an opened box; she nearly cuts her finger on one of the tabs. It wouldn't be the first time Jane's just taken whatever she needed and forgotten about the rest, but what could she possibly have grabbed and hauled off to the _bathroom_ with her? They've got plenty of pads and tampons—oh.

 _Oh_.

Darcy stares at the words on the side of the box she's extracted from the bag, rolling her lips between her teeth and biting down. Oh, Janey…

"Darcy?" Jane's muffled voice reaches her from the bathroom. The water shuts off. "Can you—can you come here, please?"

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.

Darcy tries to play it cool, shoving the box back in the bag and crossing the trailer to the bathroom door. She knocks with one knuckle. "What's up, Janey? We outta t.p. or something?"

The door opens; Jane's fully dressed, but she's clutching a white plastic stick in one hand like she's not sure what to do with it but can't let it go. She makes eye contact, and Darcy swallows. "Can you—can you tell me what this says?"

She already knows. It's right there on her face. But she wants Darcy to tell her she's seeing things, that she's got it wrong, _ha-ha Janey, maybe you should go get your eyes checked_.

Only she's exactly right, and Darcy can't bear to lie to her. A single glance confirms it.

"It, uh—it says you're pregnant."

* * *

Loki leans back on his hands. The roof of this mobile home has been his perch for some number of hours now. He doesn't really care to count them.

A couple of days lurking about the area has given him the information he needs. Thor is dead—the woman's Soulmark has faded. That much he was able to glimpse for certain this afternoon, as she moved foodstuffs from the vehicle into the tiny domicile. In theory, he is done here.

In theory, he is _done_.

For what else is there? No longer does Asgard live. There is perhaps a chance that Brynhilde escaped when ordered to, on the jump ship. Just as much a chance that Thanos snapped his fingers and slew her from half a galaxy away. Mayhap Sif, half-Vanir and on Vanaheim at the time of Hela's invasion, lives still. But they are not the blood of Odin. Not the kin of Thor, the beating heart of the Aesir, and neither is he. He is merely a jotun's bastard. Asgard is well and truly gone now, the damage unreversed. Not like the ones the humans knew to save, the ones destroyed in that single moment when the gauntlet was completed. Only some of the damage is undone, and it does not include the destruction of all Loki once knew.

He has made do for himself before, of that there is no doubt. But the part of him satisfied by such things is diminished. The temporary panacea of drifting from realm to realm, planet to planet is gone, fled entirely in the moment he came to know that he was once more Odinson in his _munr_ if not by blood. Nothing in the stars holds any appeal now. Nothing except…

Loki pulls his arms forward, sitting upright. He doesn't need to roll his sleeve back to trace where the markings are; he's had a thousand years to memorize the exact shape and placement of them on his skin. If he stares hard enough at his vambrace, he can almost see them. Perhaps there is only one thing left in his life to do. One thing left to discover.

But two things hinder him: a revelation, and a curiosity. The revelation came hard on the heels of the news about Thor, and it explains why he felt such traces of his brother's presence, despite his death. Because perhaps, _perhaps_ the blood of Asgard is not so thoroughly vanquished as he believes. Perhaps something, some last trace of the mightiest of the Nine Realms can be salvaged, in some form.

It is almost too momentous a thought to consider for long. Loki knows that if he ruminates upon it, he will come to a decision that will demand much of him. He is not so sure he is willing to give it. Because it will require the kind of steadfastness and commitment that has never been in him, changeable child of chaos that he is.

The curiosity is, in its own way, just as powerful. The other woman, not-Foster: she had looked directly at him that afternoon. Without seeing, and yet he has the intuition that he was at least _sensed_. But that is impossible, for Loki knows how to escape even the eyes of Heimdall, who saw everything else. Even the eye of Odin Borson, All-Father. It is true that he is still weakened, still recovering from his reckless encounter with Thanos, but he is not so weak that a mortal should be able to detect his presence. None of the agents of SHIELD did. Even Jane Foster, whom he tread but inches from to glimpse the writing on her arm, had no sense of his presence at all.

Ultimately, Loki isn't quite sure _what_ moves him.

All he knows is that he's not quite done yet.

* * *

"Ugh. Seriously, can we switch to Mario Kart now?" Darcy looks down at her controller and wrinkles her nose.

Jane doesn't exactly laugh at her predicament, but there's a thin little smile on her face, and it's the best thing Darcy's seen all week, so she considers it a victory.

Not, of course, that this means she'll let it go by unremarked-upon. "You shut up and eat your brownies."

"I didn't say anything." The Tetris Queen sets her controller down, too, muting the tinny 8-bit start screen and plucking another of Darcy's chocolate fudge squares of deliciousness from the plate they've been slowly working through since 8 p.m.

Darcy knows she's eventually going to have to guide her boss through doctor's visits and prenatal nutrition and who knows what the fuck else, but very consciously sets all of that aside. Tonight is for sugar comas and video games and sleeping bags on the trailer floor. The rest can come tomorrow. And if Jane's over thirty and Darcy's gonna be pushing it soon, who the fuck cares? Everyone deserves a break sometimes. No one more so right now than Jane does.

Which is, of course, a sure sign that everything's about to go sideways.

There's a small noise behind them. The kind of thing Darcy would normally attribute to the age of the trailer, but she still hasn't forgotten her creepy gut feeling earlier in the day, and so her hand slides into her slouchy purse, flopped on the ground next to her, and closes around the handle of her taser. She turns to stand and face the noise at the same time Jane does and—

Damn. It's probably only a split second, normal human delayed reaction time, but to Darcy it seems to take forever, because she's pretty sure she's never seen a man _this_ beautiful in her entire life. Breath hisses between her teeth, but she isn't even sure if she's pulling it in or expelling it; it feels like the time she tripped over one of the thick equipment wires in the car dealership-slash-astrophysics-lab and hit her head on Erik's desk.

Just— _damn_.

"You!" Thankfully, Jane has her shit together, and the mixture of surprise and venom in her voice snaps Darcy _right the hell out of her daze_ , thank you very much. She points the taser, biting her tongue to keep from saying something stupid.

The man regards the weapon for a moment, head tilted in something that looks an awful lot like amusement, and just briefly, he meets her eyes. Darcy knows somehow that she's seen that exact, perfect shade of green before, in some form, but she tries not to let her thoughts drift. There's an intruder in their house, and for all she knows he could be bent on killing the both of them. Why he'd want to almost doesn't matter. There are possibilities, and that's enough.

His eyes shift, landing on Jane, and slowly, he raises his hands so that they sit at shoulder height. "I am not here to harm you, Dr. Foster. Quite the opposite." He enunciates slowly, calmly, but this does not stop the lilt of the words from sounding entirely too musical.

Darcy resists the urge to slap herself in the face. What the fuck is _wrong_ with her? She doesn't get like this about men—she doesn't get like this about anyone. Or _hasn't_ , at least. Some of the haze clears, and this time she knows the breath is inwards, bolstering. Her finger shifts to the taser's trigger. "Janey, if you want me to hit him, just say when."

She can't chance the look sideways to take in her boss's expression, but she can hear Jane's breath tremble. "You're supposed to be dead," she says, but her words are swiftly losing the venom, misery rushing in like high tide to fill the vacuum. "Twice over. You're supposed to be dead, and he's supposed to be alive."

At that moment, Darcy knows exactly who this is.

Fuuuuuck.

Loki—he can't be anyone but Thor's dysfunctional little brother, though his sense of Earth-styling is much more on point—actually flinches at that. "Yes," he agrees quietly, and Darcy feels her eyebrows arch. Weird thing to agree to. "But unfortunately it seems the Norns had other plans."

"What do you want?" Miserable, and _tired_. Oh, Janey.

Loki's lips thin into a compressed line before he speaks. His eyes drop a ways below Jane's, settling momentarily on her abdomen before bouncing right back up. "To do right by my brother's kin. By Asgard."

Jane makes a bitter sound. Darcy thinks it's almost supposed to be an incredulous laugh, but it doesn't come out right. "When have you ever done right by—by him? By Asgard?"

A muscle flexes in Loki's jaw. Darcy's hand tightens on the taser, and she takes a step to the side, putting herself partway between them. She doesn't know if that's a sign of anger or something else, but she's not taking the chance. Even if he _is_ a god. She's tased one of those before, and she'll damn well do it again if he makes her.

"Nevertheless," he grinds out, still making no aggressive motions. "I would like to try."

"I don't trust you." Hard-bitten as the words are, Darcy can sense a change in Jane's body language behind her. She's losing the will to argue. Normally, that would be near impossible for Jane of all people, but it's been a long day. A long couple of months. She's exhausted. They're both exhausted.

Maybe, Darcy thinks, Loki's exhausted, too.

She sees it a little in the slope of his shoulders. "An entirely reasonable-stance," he admits softly. "And yet it does not change my… obligations."

In the moment, Darcy's not quite sure why she does it, but she slides her finger off the taser's trigger and lowers it. Even adrenaline-drunk and sugar-high, it doesn't take long to see that if he wanted to hurt them, he could have done it several times over already. They're two humans—pretty small ones at that—with nothing between them but a taser that honestly probably wouldn't register as more than a tickle to him. He's a god with magic powers and… whatever else. "Jane," she says quietly, but her eyes don't leave Loki. "I'm not sure how much choice we have here." They certainly don't have a damn thing to hold over him.

Jane, brilliant as she is, has to see that, too. It's probably why she finally capitulates, sort of.

"You want to do right by him? Prove it. If none of us are dead in a week, I might believe you." One of her hands clenches in the back of Darcy's shirt, pulling a little at the fabric. "But you sleep outside, take care of yourself, and treat us both with respect."

Loki inclines his head; he's clearly not in any mood to try and wring concessions, either. "As you wish," he replies.

Jane nods. "I'm—I'm going to bed. I have to… sleep on this." She picks up the sleeping bag she was planning to use and brushes past Loki, exiting the trailer and heading for the Pinz.

Darcy wonders if Jane plans to inform SHIELD of the sudden reappearance of a possibly-former supervillain. She's not sure which answer she'd prefer. The taser slips from her numb hand and clatters onto the floor, with a thud loud enough to make her jump. God, _today_.

Clearing her throat, she tries for an awkward smile and can't hold it more than a twitchy half-second. Her mental filter fails to kick in, as it often does, and she blurts the first thing that comes to mind.

"Honestly, all things considered, that could have gone a lot worse."

For some reason, Loki looks like she punched him. And like it actually did something. Gobsmacked, that's the word. His lips part slightly, face unmoving for a good… five seconds? She's not doing so great with time right now.

"This cannot possibly be happening."

Her words.

Loki, god of Mischief and Lies, would-be dictator of earth, Thor's adopted little brother, _has just said her words_.

 _Fuck_.

* * *

I hear the first chapter was a bit of a gut-punch. This is the two part of a one-two combo, I guess, but things do get a bit brighter from here. But, you know, the course of true love and realm-saving never did run smooth, so…

Feedback always appreciated; I'm kind of floored by the response so far, actually!


	3. Algiz

_._

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 3: Algiz

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.22.19**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

And here he was, once more a plaything of the Norns.

The blessings of the gods are often double-edged; he has simply been the one usually most willing to admit it. Take, for example, his mother's bestowal of Soulmarks upon the realms. The gift was meant to be as much warning as anything. A reminder to the All-Father of just what his treaty-bride could do, and so unto Odin's domain was it granted, which at the time included most of the Nine—Midgard and Jotunheim among them.

Perhaps, to the simpleminded, they are nothing but beneficence: a sign that whatever else is true, it must be that some bit of happiness lies out there in wait. But a Soulmark is no guarantee of any such thing. For all her ability to see, Frigga was not a Norn, and her machinations were to them the height of presumption. And so there are those born with no marks at all, those born with the greyed, dead marks of a match long departed to the afterlife, and those who would meet their matches only to find that it was more cruel joke than gift.

He wonders, now, if he's not among the last.

For there she is, this tiny Midgardian woman, with courage enough to aim a weapon at him knowing full well who he is, and sense enough to lower it when it has become clear that there is no purpose to the act. He can't help the way his eyes wander back to her every so often, made easy by her proximity to Dr. Foster. Once the vessel of the Aether, now perhaps in a way a different kind of vessel, for Loki's last chance at doing something right.

Not that he'd ever describe her as _merely_ that, for he can admit that his brother's Bonded is extraordinary in several ways. Her fortitude, for example, is exhausting, her suspicion sharp and pointed. Loki lets it cut him because he deserves to be cut, after what he has done. But what he cannot allow it to do is turn him away, and when the impasse is reached, Dr. Foster takes her leave in such a way that Loki knows she's the gale to Thor's thunderstorm, and it's almost familiar.

But all those thoughts are banished as soon as the other woman speaks. His words.

For a thousand years they have lain on his skin. Through meetings with men and women and others great and small, beautiful and homely, interesting and hopelessly dull. Always unspoken. And now of all times, when he's resolved to set them aside in the name of duty and familial obligation—to do for once something for Asgard and not for Loki—only _now_ does he hear them.

If the Norns aren't laughing at him, Odin surely is.

"This cannot possibly be happening." His silver tongue fails him, the words escaping before he has considered the effect they will have, the way they will sound. He cannot help his utter disbelief, the strange ambivalence of relief and despair rendering his tone flat.

He knows from nothing but the look on her face that they are _her_ words. She stares at him for a distended, tight moment, the night-sky of her eyes wide and guileless. The color; even the color is right, the same hue as the scrawl upon his arm.

The moment stretches, stretches, _snaps_. She—he still does not even know her name—reaches down to tug at her left sleeve, and Loki is not sure whether to feel exultation or panic. Her words are in his own hand, neat and precise, the very thoughtless thing he just uttered, and bright green. That seems to startle her as much as anything. She darts her glance back up to him, face troubled.

"They were faded—I thought you were dead."

That at least, he has a simple answer for. "I almost was."

She nods slightly, shock still evident in her features. Loki catalogues them automatically: large eyes, full lips, a nose with enough strength not to get lost amidst her other particulars. He hesitates to give valence to the impression—to call it anything, _her_ anything—and she saves him from needing to, sighing in a way he interprets as some combination of fatigue and frustration.

"I'm sorry," she says, letting the loose garment fall back over her arm. "I know we should probably… talk about this, at some point, but it's just been a really long day. Month. Something, you know?"

Garbled as the words are, Loki understands the sentiment behind them perfectly well. His tongue feels uncomfortably heavy in his own mouth, though, and so he nods and hopes it's enough.

Perhaps it is, because she continues. "So, um… do you want to sit down? There's still brownies. I know Jane said you have to sleep outside, but I honestly don't remember Thor—" she pauses, flinches. "Sorry. I mean I don't think you Asgardians sleep much, and I'm definitely not going to, so. I guess you can hang out with me, if you want?" The uncertainty in the last part is palpable, as though she fears he'll decline.

Loki, though, almost can't believe she's offered. A dozen reasons spring to mind why she ought not, in the name of good sense, but he does not leap to remind her of any of them. Instead, he shifts, slowly so as not to startle her, and walks around the couch currently between them. The floor on this part of the dwelling is currently host to what seem to be her belongings; some kind of narrow purple blanket, a satchel, and the weapon she almost deployed earlier, as well as a short table with what must be the food items she referred to.

He sits gingerly on one end of the sofa, and she takes up a spot on the other, folding her legs beneath her and dropping her hands into her lap.

"What is your name?" he asks at last. In any other situation he'd either have been appalled at his own manners or deliberately rude, to have avoided the simple question so long, but in this case he simply seems to have forgotten to ask. The circumstances are so peculiar that he also forgets to blame himself for it.

"Oh. Right." She laughs, breathy and barely-there. "Kinda forgot there's no way you'd know."

Her brows furrow a moment, and she shakes her head, though it is not directed at him, he believes. "Darcy. My name's Darcy Lewis. Welcome back to Earth, I guess. You kinda caught us at a bad time."

"I suppose," he replies, "that's only fitting."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.23.19**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

The conversation hadn't gotten much further than the introductions last night; despite her predictions, Darcy had fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of Loki's version of the last few years, right after the Aether 'adventure' with Jane and Thor. Somehow she'd had the feeling he wasn't bullshitting her, god of lies or not, but after a while the cadence of his voice was just too lulling, too soft, and she'd fallen asleep with her head against the armrest and her knees curled to her chest.

She'd woken that morning with the old knit blanket from the couch draped over her, said god nowhere to be seen.

She still hasn't seen him, actually; Jane reappeared in the trailer a half hour after Darcy woke, quiet in that solemn way that means she's still processing. They ate their eggs and toast in silence, Darcy respecting her boss's need to come to grips with the new development without having yet another one dropped in her lap. She'll give it a couple days, then tell her. Long enough to maybe get a little clearer about how _she_ feels about the whole thing.

But now Jane's pushed her plate forward away from her and started scribbling notes about something, and Darcy knows she's back to the Foster-patented Workaholic Coping Mechanisms. It'll be a while before she's capable of normal human interactions again, and that's okay. They've learned to give each other space when it's really important.

With a light brush of her fingers over Jane's shoulder, Darcy scoots past the table and heads into the bathroom, showering quickly and dressing in fresh clothes. She usually doesn't do too much with her hair, and settles on a quick and easy braid over one shoulder today, pulling on a light sweater she can swim in. It's New Mexico and summer, and she doesn't have to hide her Soulmark from anyone anymore since the words have been said, but habits are hard to break and it won't be hot yet anyway. Too early.

She'd prefer to be barefoot, but the trailer park's not exactly always safe ground, and Jane might have left parts sitting on the dry dirt/grass combo. So she slips on her canvas crashbacks and hops down from the trailer, bypassing the little staircase entirely. Thank the Norns or whoever for layerable sports bras. Straightening, Darcy sets her hands on her hips and turns around in a full circle.

"Looking for me?" The voice comes from above, and she startles at the suddenness of it, falling out of her smooth turn into half a stagger, bracing herself on her back foot so she doesn't fall over.

There's a little sound, then, something amused but not quite laughter, and Darcy frowns, tilting her chin upwards until, yes, she can see that Loki is sitting on the roof of the trailer. For some reason. He's back in what she figures are Asgardian clothes, some kind of green tunic and loose black pants. That's gotta be the space viking equivalent of sweats and a hoodie, which means comfort clothes. There could be a lot of reasons for that, but she bets she knows which one it is.

"Yep," she replies, popping the end of the word a little. Taking the couple of steps necessary, she grabs the ladder on the side of the trailer and climbs. Loki shifts aside obligingly, something that kind of but not really surprises her, until she can turn and plant herself on the roof next to him. She knows it shouldn't be this clean; no doubt he used magic to make someplace to sit.

For a little while, neither of them says anything. Darcy hasn't decided yet how she feels about this whole Soulmate deal. On the one hand, good god he's easy to look at. And it's a huge relief to just know he's alive after all. On the other… there's pretty much everything else about the situation. The timing almost couldn't be worse. She's pretty sure he's functionally immortal compared to her fragile, short-lived human self, she has no idea what they could even possibly have in common, and, well… there's still the part where he tried to take over her planet that one time. Which included mind-controlling Erik. Not cool, even _if_ Erik's fine now.

The situation is just… too big for her. So instead of going there, Darcy takes a deep breath and tackles the only-slightly-easier topic instead. "So, I gotta ask. What exactly's your plan here? Just like… hang around until Jane has the superbaby?" He sure has hell better not be planning to like… _take_ the kid or something, but somehow she doesn't think Loki's the baby-snatching type. Thankfully. Because Soulmate or not, she'd fight him if he tried. Lose easily and quickly, but fight him anyway.

Loki leans back on his hands, feet stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. At the question, he turns slightly towards her, a tiny smile playing at one corner of his mouth. Darcy has to look away, and fixes her attention out on the trailer-park landscape in front of them instead of his face. She's way less likely to think about stupid things that way.

"You assume I have a plan," he says quietly. "That's flattering."

She snorts, unable to stop herself from swinging her eyes back in his direction. "I dunno, Mischief. I kinda thought you always did. Seems like thinking three steps ahead is kind of your thing." At least that's the impression she has from all of Thor's stories. Sometimes it's a charming trait, other times pretty diabolical, but it seems to be a constant theme with him. And despite what some people might think, Thor wasn't an idiot, either—thinking three steps ahead of him would be a legitimate achievement.

He tilts his head a little at the address she uses, but does not remark upon it. "I suppose so. I do have an… idea. But I suspect Dr. Foster is not going to like it."

Darcy hums. "No, probably not. I really doubt she's going to like much of anything you have to say for a while. But that's why I'm here." She shrugs, pushing her glasses up her nose. "I might not look like much, but me and Janey? We get each other. If you can convince me, I can convince her. Eventually." Darcy wouldn't agree to anything that she didn't think wasn't for the best for her friend-slash-boss, and Jane knows that.

"And you think convincing you is the lesser obstacle?" Loki doesn't quite sound like he believes it, though Darcy's not sure why. Wasn't he famously persuasive?

She arches an eyebrow, scooting forward to dangle her feet off the roof. "Well… I don't hate you on principle, or blame you for what happened to Thor, so… yeah. Jane'll stop doing that eventually, too, but she's got to work through her feelings first, and that might take a while."

Loki is quiet for an oddly-long time. When Darcy leans back a little to look at him, she finds that he's already looking at her— _studying_ her, it has to be. Like she's some sort of weird new species of something. She blinks back, nonplussed. She's always been _just_ far enough on the weird side of things that she's used to that look.

It fades back into something more neutral, and she flops onto the slight slope of the roof, hugging her arms around herself and waiting for him to explain.

He doesn't make her wait any longer. "I wish to remove the both of you from this realm," he says. Something about the flat coolness of his tone reads as artificial to her, but Darcy's more patient than people give her credit for, when the subject's important enough, so she doesn't call him on it.

"Why?" she asks instead.

"Because," he replies, "Dr. Foster's child is all that remains of Asgard. There are people here who will exploit that. I do not want them to have the chance."

Darcy considers that. There's no mistaking that he's right, really. They've got a reprieve while everyone tries to sort through the aftermath, for sure, but she knows it won't be long before SHIELD or whatever's left of the Fury-Coulson-Hill project that isn't called that anymore will want to check in. Probably by then there won't be any hiding Jane's condition, and the conclusions about it will be obvious. In a world with too few superheroes and the knowledge that some things out there can destroy indiscriminately, well… it doesn't take a genius to guess what would happen.

And that would be assuming it was the relatively-good guys that found them first. Darcy doesn't even want to _think_ about how things would go if HYDRA or AIM or whoever the hell beat them to it.

"Where would we go?" she asks, her own voice strange in her ears. Level, even, free of panic or fear or outrage at the suggestion. It's been a long couple of months—her thoughts keep circling back to that.

She can't see Loki, sitting to her left and a bit behind her as he is, but she hears him shift a little. "Vanaheim. My—my mother was Vanir. Her father still rules the realm, and he will want to see his trueborn great-grandchild safe. They will shelter us."

Darcy's almost-finished political science degree kicks in, and she has _questions._ Narrowing them down to the most important is almost easy. "Permanently? Or just long enough to do what SHIELD would do, only in space?" She doesn't want to go anywhere that won't respect that Jane is as much that kid's parent as Thor. That she'll have the _work_ of parenting all to herself.

"I don't know," Loki admits. "But Vanaheim will be safe at least that long. Which is not something I can say of Midgard. I've not been since… since the destruction of Asgard. I will need time to assess what the status of former alliances might be, but Njord owes debts to the Aesir that he can now only pay to me. He will honor them." She's pretty sure she hears a caveat in there. A _for a time_ or something like that.

Darcy considers this. It's obvious that the risks are many. Nothing's guaranteed. She sort of expected him to bullshit her a little more on this, because honestly the truth as it stands isn't too persuasive. But maybe his honesty is. Maybe it means something to her that he tells her the truth, instead of sugar-coating it. At least as far as she can tell.

She expels a deep breath, pursing her lips. "Okay," she says quietly. "I can see your point, and I'll talk to Jane about it. But the decision's hers, and I need you to promise you'll leave us alone to talk about it. No… doppelgängers or invisibility or whatever it is you can do, okay?"

Her head tips back again to take him in. Maybe she's getting used to the rush of it, because it doesn't punch her in the gut as hard this time, the way he looks. She can see past the… godliness or whatever, and what's underneath is tired. Maybe even as unsure as she is right now.

He nods slightly, face set into some impassive cast she'll need a lot more time to decipher. "So be it."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 06.24.19**  
 **Location: Puente Antiguo, New Mexico**

* * *

"Janey, we've gotta talk."

Jane closes her eyes, pushing out a soft sigh through her nose. While Darcy's words are true, they aren't exactly what she wants to hear at the moment. She gives herself a few seconds to brace for the coming conversation, then stands, pushing away from the magnetometer and parking herself in the camping chair again. "He's not here, is he?"

"No." Darcy shakes her head. "I made sure he wasn't going to listen. This is just between you and me right now."

That's a relief. Jane doesn't know exactly how she feels about Loki being here. It's not fair of her to wish so desperately that it was Thor who lived every time she catches sight of him. But she can't help the way he tears the wound open again just by being here. Maybe as time passes it will happen less, but Jane also isn't certain she _wants_ it to happen less. She doesn't want Thor to fade in her memory or stop living so close in her heart, and if the pain of his loss is all she has left to hold on to, then she'll do her best never to let it go.

Some traitorous part of her whispers that it's unhealthy, what she's doing, that it will rend her apart before long. Maybe that part of her is right. She doesn't care.

Darcy must take her silence as cue to continue, because her face shifts, features morphing into something with a little less of her usual blustery bravado and confidence. "So, uh… I gotta ask, you know? Don't flip a lid on me here, but… this is happening. I want to help you. Is the best way for me to do that gonna be to find you an OB-GYN? Or—or maybe a Planned Parenthood?"

There's probably no more delicate way to put it than that. Jane won't pretend the thought didn't cross her mind, even. Who's she, to be able to handle whatever's going to come from having a god's child? She doesn't even know what to expect physiologically. It's not like she and Thor had ever _talked_ about this. For all she knows, her human body might not be equipped to handle any of it at all.

"An OB," she replies quietly, firmly enough that Darcy will know she's sure. "But—thanks, Darce." It's really nice to know that her friend didn't just assume what her feelings about this were going to be, one way or the other. That she has someone who'd support her no matter what choice she made.

Darcy's shoulders relax just a little, and she nods, patting the laptop on her legs but not actually opening it. "Okay. Can do. I'll get you in for a blood test this week just to make completely sure, and then your ten-week ultrasound after that. They'll probably give you your vitamins the first time, but don't worry about remembering those; I'll do it for you." The speed of her words picks up as she talks, almost rambling.

That's a sign. Jane clears her throat, snapping Darcy's attention back to her. "Okay, two things: one, how do you know so much about how this works? And two, what aren't you telling me?" She wonders for a moment if the two questions don't have the same answer, but Jane thinks that, at this point in their friendship, she'd know if Darcy'd ever had a kid.

"Oh. Uh, well, my best friend in high school got knocked up, and her parents were assholes, so I basically had to take her to all her stuff. Help her deal with the symptoms and all that."

Jane hadn't known that after all, but though she would normally ask for the story, the second question remains conspicuously unanswered, and she narrows dark eyes slightly at her former intern instead.

Darcy makes a noise that sounds like the beginning of a whine, but it cuts off abruptly. Wordlessly, she lifts her sleeve, rolling it up to her elbow. Jane blinks—even Darcy's not usually as reckless or gauche as to show people her latent Mark. After the words are spoken, it's common, like wearing an engagement ring or friendship bracelet, in the rare platonic cases. But before…

Jane's never cared too much about social conventions, either, though, and leans forward curiously, studying the handwriting. It's a lovely script, neat and almost calligraphic.

 _This cannot possibly be happening._

"Looks like you're the first," Jane says with a little trace of amusement, tapping the green letters. It's usually pretty easy to tell who speaks first and who second in a pair, unlike with hers and Thor's. But that was because he was delirious when she spoke to him.

"Yeah," Darcy replies, voice strained. "I was."

"Was?" Jane lets the implications of that sink in for a moment. "You can't—you're not serious. _Darcy_." The words come out wrong, harsher or something than she meant them to be, but it does strain the bounds of rational belief, doesn't it? Of all people, of all _times_.

"Serious as a heart attack," Darcy replies, no humor to be found. "The other night, after you left. I said something dumb like I always do and then… this. I'd thought—I'd thought the mark was gone. It had faded a lot; I couldn't even look at it. But it… tracks. About the time Thor thought he was dead, he… almost was."

Jane's heart feels like it's breaking all over again. "Oh, Darcy, I'm—I'm so sorry." She hadn't known, but of course she hadn't. What was Darcy going to do? Tell her while she was in the middle of her own troubles? She could have. Jane would have listened. But she acknowledges that it would have been one more thing to weigh on her, and Darcy had been merciful in keeping it back.

"I'm sorry, too, Jane." There is no need to ask what for. Lately just about everything is cause for it.

But this—one more revelation on top of the rest—it falls into place a certain way in Jane's mind, and she understands in this moment that she has to start thinking about their situation differently. Were she in more ordinary circumstances, with a more ordinary Soulmate, this would be the time to shut herself in and mourn and just _sit_ with her pain, for as long as she needs to. She could send Loki away and have nothing to do with anything, and she and her friend could muddle through this as well as possible and find some way to carve a life out of what's been thrown at them.

But she can't turn Loki away, because Loki is Darcy's Soulmate. Darcy would let her—Darcy would stay if that was what Jane wanted. But for that very reason, she can't. She _can't_ force the choice, will not deny her friend what she herself has so recently lost. Even if it's her turn to bear a little extra burden for a while.

And so she needs to find some way to allow the plan to include him. Their world of two, sometimes three with Thor, needs to become a world of three with Loki and later four. Because Jane isn't giving up Darcy, and she isn't giving up her baby. Whatever else she has to accept to make that work… well, that's just how it's going to be. And with or without Loki in the picture, there's little chance for a quiet life away from everything, anyway.

People wanted her research when it was merely _possible_ that it would lead them to Asgard and its inhabitants, its secrets. When word gets out about her child—there will be no chance for quiet. For peace. Not here.

Jane meets Darcy's eyes. She can do this. _They_ can do this.

"Tell me what his plan is."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19**  
 **Location: En Route to Silver City, New Mexico**

* * *

Darcy's not exactly sure how it came to this, but it probably counts as progress, of a sort.

Jane had heard her out on Loki's whole Vanaheim plan, but she isn't totally sold yet. Darcy gets it, because frankly _she's_ not totally sure about it, and that's even considering that she wouldn't be leaving much of anything behind to realm-hop. Jane doesn't have a family, either, but she has a career and professional respect and her research. Maybe she could keep doing the research off-world, but the rest of it is a bit more… iffy.

So for now they're in a weird kind of limbo. And here she is, driving their still-not-returned red pickup truck, Jane in the passenger seat and Loki—lean, long Loki—trying valiantly not to look too uncomfortable in the middle seat as the highway speeds by under their tires. Darcy's got the windows cracked and her phone plugged in, but enough mercy not to play the music too loud, at least. She's settled on her classical playlist because it's relaxing, and try as all of them might, the situation they're in is the opposite.

Since Puente Antiguo is literally too small for maps, it's a bit of a drive to the nearest women's clinic, hospital, or doctor's office big enough to have a dedicated obstetrician and gynecologist. After some research, Darcy'd settled on Dr. Benally in Silver City—who'd proven to be the right choice. She didn't talk down to Jane, just explained what Darcy's genius didn't already know, patiently and with the right kind of warmth, so it's back to her they go for the ultrasound and checkup.

Loki, ever more uncomfortable as time went by and they still hadn't moved, had wanted to come, and Jane figured it was better to have him where he could be seen than following them invisibly anyway. Darcy thought he might stay behind if she asked nicely, but she also didn't really want to ask, so the concession was a relief.

At least until transportation came up. It'd have made more sense to take the Pinz, but Jane is still building out of it and doesn't want it moved, so here they are, one of Loki's long, lean legs pressed against Darcy's in the cab of the truck. She's never been too fussy about personal space or anything, but she can't _not_ notice how firm the lines of him are, how solid he is, and it's more than a little diverting.

Hence the relaxing playlist, the fresh air circulating through the enclosed space, and her current attempt to keep herself thinking about anything else except for that unbroken contact.

"So did Thor ever tell you how we all met?" The story is and always will be one of her favorites, because on paper she sounds like a total badass in it, even if she was really just kinda scared and panicky and impulsive.

"No," Loki replies. After a beat, he adds: "There wasn't… ever much time."

Darcy nods. Thor's still a bit of a touchy subject, for obvious reasons, but after Jane shared the breakfast story with the coffee mug, she and Loki had managed to smile at each other for three whole seconds before remembering things were tense, and Darcy wants to engineer a repeat of those good vibes, so she soldiers on.

"So we're out observing this anomaly thing, right? Middle of the desert, middle of the night. Jane's got us driving towards this storm that's kicked up pretty much out of nowhere. I'm freaking out, because I really don't wanna die for six college credits, so I try to turn the van around." She shakes her head, darting a glance up at Loki. He's listening, but as expected has yet to appreciate the awesomeness that this story will be. "But Janey here is all ' _no Darcy, we must all risk our lives for science_!' and grabs the wheel, which like… bad driving etiquette Jane, jeez."

Jane is as unimpressed as ever with both Darcy's impression of her voice and also the admonishment, rolling her eyes and—yup, she sticks out her tongue. This is why they're friends.

Loki looks more amused at the byplay than the story proper, his eyes flicking between them before resettling on her. And she'll ignore the way that prickles the skin at the nape of her neck. She will ignore it like it's her job.

Darcy clears her throat. "Anyway, we're arguing, and I'm trying not to get us killed, and then out of nowhere—bam!" She smacks the steering wheel with her hand for emphasis. "Collision. We saw this dude for all of like… a second, and then Jane hit him with the car."

"You were driving," Jane reminds her, brows furrowed.

"Yeah, but if you'd let me steer how I wanted, we wouldn't have been on track to hit him anyway." When Jane has no smart answer for that—because there isn't one—Darcy resumes. "So we stop the car, and the three of us pile out, and there's this guy just laid out on the sand. Jane gets all concerned, which is fine I guess, and runs over there all like ' _don't be dead'_ and I offer CPR, since I know how." She skims both the actual content of Jane's words, because they're too important for a lighthearted recollection, and also her own thoughts about Thor, because… probably a little embarrassing to admit how many times she'd teased him about being cut as hell.

Also she's kind of forgetting the details. Something about the way it feels to be this close to a different god, probably. Asgardians are really unfairly attractive, in general.

"Anyway, guy wakes up, starts yelling stuff about worlds and his hammer or whatever, and then like… storms over to us all big and scary. And at this point, I'm freaking out a little, you know? We're in the middle of some weird atmospheric event that I'm not qualified to understand, and this guy's ranting at us about stuff that doesn't make any sense, and while I definitely don't approve of doing anything to hurt the mentally ill, he's huge and none of us are. So… I grab my taser—same thing I nearly hit you with that first day—and hit him with it. He drops like a sack of potatoes."

"You… rendered my brother insensate with an electrical weapon?" Loki sounds slightly unsure, but she figures maybe some of her lingo is weird to translate. She'd probably think the same of his, except she was huge into fantasy stuff until it became her real life and has a filter for people who sound like they came out of a LARP battle and haven't dropped character yet.

"Yep." She grins, the little rush of pride in the story for a moment outweighing the bittersweetness of telling it now.

Jane's got her face turned away, but she's smiling a little, too.

And Loki—Loki laughs. Just a little, just a chuckle, but it's rich and mellow and perfect in its way.

Darcy counts it a victory greater than tasing a god.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19**  
 **Location: Silver City, New Mexico**

* * *

"Jane Foster?"

Three people stand immediately. The physician's assistant looks slightly taken aback, probably in part because one of those people is a very tall, very attractive Norse god in a rather poor disguise. Jane's still a little surprised no one has recognized him, but he does blend a bit better than Thor does—did.

She releases a breath, soft so Darcy doesn't hear it.

"That's me," she says, and there's a bit of awkwardness when it's time to actually move forward; Darcy and Loki are both unsure if they should, but she can tell they both want to also. Truthfully… she'd be more comfortable with just Darcy, but she supposes that, in a way, Loki's family too. She knows what Thor would say, knows what he would want for them all in this situation, and so she relaxes a little.

"They can come, too," she adds. The tension evaporates.

After running her through some of the basic diagnostics, the PA leaves, casting a last glance in Loki's direction. Jane knows the question she's thinking of, but she doesn't answer it. Loki pretends not to notice. Darcy probably doesn't. She can be a bit oblivious to things like that sometimes.

Eventually, Dr. Benally, a tall Native American woman with the most soothing contralto Jane's ever heard, enters, humming almost under her breath as she catches herself up on the new notations to Jane's chart. "Welcome back, Dr. Foster," she says, genial as the last visit. "I see you've brought company."

It doesn't seem to require an answer, so Jane doesn't give one.

"How are you finding the symptoms?" Dr. Benally unwinds the stethoscope from where it's draped over her shoulders, setting the earpieces in and warming the bell end between her gloved palms a moment.

Jane grimaces. "The morning sickness is… intense," she admits.

Dr. Benally nods slightly, scooting her rolling chair closer to press the stethoscope to Jane's chest. Darcy parks herself in the room's other chair, and Loki holds up the wall next to her with his back and shoulders.

"Is it multiple times a day?"

"Yeah. I'm eating in small amounts often, like you said, but I'm not sure it's helping much." There was only so much any doctor could do for her, probably—Loki had mentioned that there would likely be issues arising from the fact that her child was half-Aesir. If this was the worst of it, she'd consider herself lucky.

The doctor's brows knit over her dark eyes, and she makes a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. "Some pregnancies are just difficult that way, I'm afraid. First ones in particular can be tricky." Shifting the instrument to Jane's back, she instructs her to take several deep breaths, listening quietly and then rolling herself away to make a few more notes.

"Okay, well, we've got you down for an ultrasound today, so if you'll just lay back, we can knock that out here, too." She doesn't do any of that chirpy aren't you so excited nonsense that Jane feared, which is welcome.

Because while part of her is coming around to this, most of her is just petrified. She needs to be grounded in the science and facts of it all, and not told what her emotions should be. She'll figure those out just as soon as it feels like she can breathe again, and she'll do it with people she's close to, not random strangers.

So she lays back, shivers a little at the application of the gel, and locks eyes with Darcy upside-down. Her former intern makes an exaggerated face, and Jane manages a smile. This ultrasound will be used for an NT scan, according to Dr. Benally, which tests for certain genetic abnormalities. The thought's almost funny to Jane, and not for the first time, she wonders what the Aesir genome looks like. Biologist she is not, but it certainly has practical relevance for her now, though it's definitely not a question she can ask just anyone.

It occurs to her that Loki might know, if she could bring herself to ask him. His eyes are pointedly on the screen now, preserving her modesty to an unnecessary degree, perhaps. Still, it's almost… good of him. To care about that. Almost.

"Huh." Dr. Benally's vaguely-bemused exhalation draws Jane's attention, and her eyes flick to the monitor.

Not that she can really make sense of the sonogram. "What is it?"

"I think—hold on." The wand moves a little on Jane's abdomen, slightly distended from its former shape. "Ah-ha. I thought so." The doctor smiles a little.

"You're having twins, Dr. Foster."

* * *

By the time they're leaving the clinic, Jane has her sonogram photos in a manila envelope and the doctor's reassurances that her kids—plural—look to be in great shape.

Darcy, however, noticed that Loki didn't look even slightly surprised by the whole thing. She narrows her eyes at him as they step out into the bright afternoon sunlight, poking him in the arm. "Hey. Did you know already? About the twins thing?"

He clears his throat, and she knows she's right. "Not on purpose. It's just…"

"Ah. Say no more, Mischief. Magic, right?"

He nods, and Darcy returns it before looking to Jane. "So bosslady, should we get you some new clothes while we're here or what?"

Jane wrinkles her nose at the prospect, clearly not thrilled. Darcy can't blame her. Shopping for clothes is a drag at the best of times; somehow it seems like shopping for maternity clothes would be even worse.

"Perhaps sustenance would be in order first?" Loki suggests.

It's not a bad idea, considering that the last time Jane ate was a few hours ago already, and Darcy's just about to agree when they round the corner to the parking lot and she freezes, grabbing Jane's shoulder by instinct. "Loki—"

"I see them."

Black suits, sunglasses; they really couldn't look any more like government goons if they tried. Which means they either are government goons, or else people trying really hard to look like them.

Unfortunately, their little group is spotted before they can casually walk right back around the same corner. Three of the suits break off from the small cluster at the pickup truck. One of those left behind starts talking, one hand halfway raised to his ear. Oh hell no. Darcy knows that must mean there's backup somewhere, and her hand reaches into her purse even as she shifts her body to position Jane between her and Loki, so she's shielded from both the front and behind.

One of the approaching men must see where her hand is, because in classic jackbooted thug fashion, his hand goes to his gun. Way to de-escalate, bro. Not that she's surprised he doesn't want to de-escalate; Darcy pulls the taser from her bag and flips the switch so it goes live.

Loki keeps himself positioned so she can see, but he's also taking up as much of the space in front of her and Jane as he can. "I hardly think it polite to draw weapons in these circumstances, gentlemen," he drawls, lifting his hands with the kind of laconic swagger she imagines he used to wear often. He's smiling, but it's a cold thing, not a hint of mirth in it.

Darcy, hand still on Jane's shoulder, chances a glance behind her. "Loki… they're coming up from the other side, too."

"Darcy—" Jane hisses, but it's too late.

She realizes her mistake only when the first man lifts his gun and fires. Loki. She called him Loki in earshot of people who clearly know who that is.

He takes the bullet in the chest, she thinks, then whirls around, wrapping one arm around Jane as another three shots ring in Darcy's ears. He's reaching for her, she can tell, and she reaches too, grasping his hand for dear life as the world swirls and blurs around them.

* * *

Whew. So there's chapter three. This is definitely more of a space/realm travel story than an earth one, but I wanted to get the situation established and the initial dynamics between the main three kind of on the way before I threw them into the main part of the adventure here. But now that the first bit's done, and they're all getting enough time to let things settle, emotions that are not sort of dampened by grief and such are going to be breaking through more often, as they kind of started to in this chapter. I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope you are, too!

In other news, I have a tumblr now? I don't really know what to do with it, but I can at least take asks or whatever until I figure out how to work the rest of it, so feel free to drop in and say hi. (It's just sigrunsdottir, for those of you on FF, where I'm not allowed to post links.)

Anyway, thank you so much for all the support so far. It's been absolutely tremendous, and I feel so privileged to have been welcomed so warmly into this fandom.


	4. Raidho

_._

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 4: Raidho

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19  
** **Location: ?**

* * *

Jane has spent a good portion of her life researching Einstein-Rosen bridges. She's traveled by one, in fact, from Earth to Asgard. So she knows it's a painfully-delirious experience.

This—whatever Loki's doing to them now—is at once smoother and a million times worse than travel by Bifrost.

The world suddenly tilts, rushing by at speeds her entirely mortal brain can't even properly process, and the dizzying, staggering _sensation_ of it all probably comes within a hairsbreadth of triggering some kind of seizure. She shuts her eyes against it, half-wittingly turning her face in towards Loki's chest. Like him or not, he's the reason she isn't getting shot at right now, or captured by some shady alphabet-soup agency, and he does feel a lot more stable than the whirling vortex of color and light around them. She's dimly aware of Darcy's body against her side, pulled close somewhere in mid-transit, but then suddenly it _stops,_ and she tears herself away quickly, finding the ground with her hands and knees and feeling her entire body contract as she heaves.

There isn't much of anything left in her stomach after her spectacularly-terrible bout of nausea that morning, but the water she'd downed in the meantime comes back up, drenching the startlingly-green grass beneath her. She might have cared to identify the shade, were she anything but sick as a dog right now.

Almost immediately, there are familiar hands in her hair: small, but strong. Darcy, gathering her tresses up into a bunch, then shifting to rub her back at the same time. "Easy there, bosslady. We're off the galactic rollercoaster now."

Despite herself, Jane finds her next breath catching, something that would have been a laugh if she wasn't so damn sore. She groans, pushing back on her hands until she more or less falls into a sitting position.

They seem to have landed in the middle of a rolling field. The grass underneath her is soft, almost springy, and here and there dotted with little flowers, every color imaginable and probably some she can't properly distinguish with her limited spectrum of vision. It smells fresh, like springtime even though summer is in full swing. Or at least it was, on Earth.

Wherever they are right now, Jane's fairly sure it's not Earth.

"Something something, Toto, something Kansas," Darcy mutters as if to confirm. Rummaging around in her purse, she comes up with a packet of tissues and a mini-toothbrush, both of which she hands to a grateful Jane. Honestly, the woman thinks of everything, grounded and present in a way Jane can only envy from quite far away. There's even a tiny tube of toothpaste.

While Jane sets about fixing the damage of high-speed travel, Darcy drops her bag on the ground and stands. "I'm, uh, sorry about back there, by the way. I wasn't thinking."

Loki, face pinched slightly, shakes his head. "You were thinking about what mattered."

Jane hadn't missed the way they'd bracketed her, the both of them. While she likes her independence, she isn't a moron: there's nothing in her repertoire that would stop a bullet, even a stray one, since the shooters probably hadn't meant to hurt her. Not yet anyway. It's still reassuring that the both of them were willing to cover her.

"Holy shit. Are those _bullets_?" Darcy's voice breaks Jane from her reflections, and she starts moving the brush again, turning her eyes to the only person she can possibly be talking to.

Now that she looks a little closer, there's a small, round hole in the front of Loki's shirt. Come to think of it… he'd possibly taken even more than that in the back, after he turned around. She makes a noise, meant to alert Darcy to this possibility, but her assistant is already moving, digging again through the canvas monstrosity she calls a purse.

"It is of little consequence," Loki protests. "Were my magic fully restored, I'd have taken no damage at all."

But that means he did take _some_ damage, and Jane spits her toothpaste to the side, accepting the bottle of water Darcy hands her to rinse with and spitting that out, too. No time to stand on ceremony. "At least let her pull them out, Loki," she says, surprising herself almost as much as she surprises him, probably. At least if the way he looks at her is any indication.

Jane shrugs. Whether they did him much harm or not, he took the wounds for her sake. Just like with the dark elves. She's willing to give a little ground for that. "Thor said you guys heal really fast, but obstructions make it take longer. So there's no point in delaying it, right?"

"Sit." Darcy's contribution is a bit more pointed, but Loki obeys.

Jane gathers up her supplies and stows them back in the purse while Darcy wipes down her tweezers with something that smells faintly like rubbing alcohol. She takes care of the ones in his back first, setting her jaw with a familiar determination and tugging quickly, efficiently, and with enough force that it only takes one per bullet. Loki doesn't even flinch. It's interesting, Jane thinks, the way the slugs are smashed almost flat, like they hit something extremely dense. It would make sense as an explanation of the clear bullet-resistance of Asgardians, but at the same time, she doesn't remember Thor being _much_ heavier than she expected for a person of his size. That must be where the magic comes in.

Thor had called his brother a sorcerer before, but at a bit of questioning, had also said that many Aesir had magic to some degree or other. The superhuman resilience and longevity were from something he just called the Apples, but anything beyond that was actual, individual magic. Including his lightning. So it must be that what makes Loki a _sorcerer_ is a particular talent for it, or a wide range of abilities, maybe.

Something to think about. Or perhaps ask about. Jane's _still_ not a biologist, but it's going to be important to know what she's dealing with in the future, she supposes.

Darcy encounters a bit more difficulty with the wound on Loki's front, which has apparently already started to heal just enough to mean she has to go digging for the bullet. She leans forward, a look of intent concentration narrowing her eyes, and places her free hand on his chest, splaying her fingers over the thin button-down shirt he's wearing. Jane wouldn't think anything of it, except she can see something Darcy can't: the way Loki's eyes widen as though he's startled. The way his hand clenches over a fistful of grass.

She tilts her head, then turns away.

Once that bullet's out, Loki and Darcy stand, and Jane does, too. The god among them has shifted his clothing with magic, back to a version of the green and black leather armor, emerald-colored cape descending to his ankles. Jane thinks it might be armor in more than one sense of the word, but she keeps this observation to herself.

"So… where to from here?"

Loki breathes out a sigh and straightens a little. With the slugs gone and new clothes, she can't even tell he was injured at all anymore. "Not far. The capital is only a mile or so in that direction." He tips his chin, and Jane follows the motion to a hill obscuring much of what lies beyond.

"And when we get there? We can just… walk in and speak to whoever's in charge?" It seems a bit absurd, but then Thor _was_ a prince. Loki probably counts as the same, their weird family dynamics aside.

"Njord, yeah?" Jane's surprised by how easily Darcy pronounces that. She'd never managed to get Mjolnir right.

Loki nods. "At this point, It would be foolish to return you to Midgard even if I wished to."

"Yeah, there's no way the goon squad isn't at the trailer already." Darcy scrunches her nose, then shoots a glance at Jane. "And I'm not sure the kids like realm travel that much yet."

Jane has to concede the point. Maybe there's a chance they can return to Earth eventually, but it would be dangerous to do that right now, and she isn't going to risk them all for the sake of being on a planet she's not even sure she's all that attached to anymore. It's funny, what so much knowledge of the worlds beyond can do to perspective. If Loki thinks they'll be safer on Vanaheim… she'll believe it. She'll keep her eyes open, just in case, but she'll believe it.

Thor believed in him. He's Darcy's Soulmate. She can't believe that anyone like that is really horrible all the way down.

"All right," she says, taking a bracing breath. "In that case, I guess we'd better get walking." She can make a mile to wherever. Glancing at her company, Jane thinks that despite everything, it might not even be unpleasant.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim, or whatever**

* * *

Darcy had never had the privilege of a visit to Asgard, but based on Jane's reaction to Vanaheim, it's at least a little bit different. She's got this look on her face like she wants to get her twitchy scientist hands on anything and everything she sees. And really, Darcy can understand that.

The architecture is magnificent, not in the kind of way that constantly smacks you over the head with how rich the occupants of the city have to be, but in the little details of it. Care is wrought into every arch, craft pressed into every molding. In places, the builders seem to have added touches for no reason at all but the beauty of them. Most of the time, it's deceptively functional—like the way the pale stone troughs cut alongside the streets irrigate the frequent trees and patches of flowers and things in their crisp, neatly-wrought boxes. It fills the place with the sound of running water, a constant undercurrent to the bustle of activity and murmur of voices, blending into some kind of exotic music.

To hear Jane tell it, Asgard went for might and majesty. If that's so, Vanaheim is trying really hard for grace and elegance. It's succeeding, as far as Darcy is concerned. It only seems to get _more_ beautiful as they head towards the castle that sits with a quiet dignity in the middle of it, presiding over the rest like… some kind of mother bird maybe. Not a hen though. Way fancier than that. A swan or something.

Their entrance isn't exactly going unnoticed, either: Loki strides in front of them like a man with all the purpose in the world, head held high, as if daring every person they pass to recognize him. Darcy doesn't know how he makes the cape billow quite that way, because if she tried, she's pretty sure she'd just end up on the ground in a tangled heap. Were the situation less serious, she'd totally call him on being dramatic. As it is, she and Jane draw enough of their own attention just being obviously _not from around here_ , courtesy of their jeans and worn shirts. Jane's gone full lumber… _jane_ today, what with the ribbed tank top and red plaid. Darcy's more hobohemian: thin shirt, cable-knit cardigan, and the beat-up Doc Martens with embroidered roses she bought in her high-school-era goth phase.

The damn city with its sparkling lights in floating wrought iron lanterns and its beautiful colored cobblestones and whatever is enough to give a girl a complex. Loki, though…

Darcy studies his back, and just barely shuts her mouth before she sighs. Ugh. She really needs to get this under control. Yes, he's unfairly attractive, and yes she might actually have half—a quarter—a _sliver_ —of a chance because apparently they're Soulmates, but this is _not_ the time to be developing a crush on Thor's morally-ambiguous little brother. He sure doesn't have one on her, and Darcy's not into the idea of embarrassing herself, thank you very much.

"We're here." His voice, though soft, still manages to startle her. Darcy realizes he's looking right at her, and wonders if it might not be too late on the embarrassment thing. He probably caught her staring at him. Oy vey.

The thoughts fade as she tips her head back to take in the castle from up close. Asgard or not, it's huge, on the kind of scale that makes her feel tiny just standing here. She swallows thickly, wrapping her arms around herself and pursing her lips. Loki's brows knit, but he doesn't say anything, gesturing for them to wait a moment and advancing to speak with the guards. They definitely haven't _failed_ to note the little party's approach, and Darcy tries not to wither under their scrutiny.

She's here for good reasons. It's legitimate, and she belongs with Jane. No one's going to kick her out. She hopes.

Whatever Loki says, it gets them in past the guards, and Darcy barely has time to gape at the tapestries and murals and sculptures in the massive hallway they enter before they're standing in what is clearly an honest-to-goodness _throne room_ , and it makes every BBC period piece she's ever seen look like kids playing with a dollhouse.

Even the room itself is little compared to the man— _god_ , she reminds herself—sitting on the throne. It's on a raised dais, a second, empty chair sitting to the left of it. The god himself has a relaxed posture, observing with what seems to be detached interest as they approach. Closer, Darcy can see that the dais is actually an island of sorts, surrounded on all sides by a pool, cut into the gilded floor. The water is so clear it's almost invisible, lending extra glimmer to the gems and metalwork inlaid into the bottom of the pool. She can't make out the exact scene from her distance, but she bets there are other gods involved, and some event she would have thought was myth less than a decade ago.

Njord's eyes are the bluest thing she's ever seen, a sort of ultramarine that's almost oversaturated. He's tall, she can see, with a fair complexion and pitch-black hair, braided back from his temples and forward into a beard studded with what she _thinks_ might actually be gilded seashells, though she can't say for sure.

They clink together softly as he straightens, and Loki stops when he does, dropping into a smooth bow. Darcy isn't sure if she should do the same, but it seems better to be safe than sorry, so she shoots a glance at Jane and follows suit. When she comes back up, Njord looks almost amused, and she wonders if she ought to have curtseyed instead, or if maybe she just looked dumb or something.

"Loki Odinson." Njord's voice is a sonorous baritone, with a certain… broadness to it. Darcy can't think of any word that fits better. "It _is_ Odinson, isn't it? I confess I struggle to keep up with the speed of things these last years." And oh shit, there's definitely a challenge in there, even if Njord sits comfortably as can be on his throne.

"Odinson. Laufeyson. Friggason. I have acquired a great many names, it seems," Loki replies, softly enough that it sounds like contrition. Just for a moment though.

"Ah. I see." The fingers of Njord's left arm tap out some kind of rhythm on the arm of his throne. Carved from wood, it looks like—some heavy dark kind, with waves chiseled into it. Darcy's beginning to sense a theme here. "And why have you come to Vanaheim, Loki-of-many-names?" His eyes shift pointedly, flickering briefly over Darcy before settling more heavily on Jane.

"We seek asylum," Loki answers, folding his hands behind his back. Darcy sees his knuckles whiten. He's not as sure of their welcome here as he said he was—or not as sure as he was ten minutes ago. It could be either. "I'm sure you have heard of the destruction of Asgard by now. And of my brother's fate. What you probably do not know is with us come the last of the Aesir. Thor's blood."

Njord straightens fully at that, losing the relaxed body language and rolling his shoulders back to sit tall against the chair. "The blood of Asgard is not yet fled from the realms of the living?"

Darcy thinks it's weird that everyone talks about this like Loki doesn't count. She must be the _only_ one who finds it strange, though, because Jane doesn't look any more puzzled about it than she ever has. She's watching Njord intently; the wheels of that big, beautiful brain no doubt spinning almost too fast to handle.

Loki nods, and Njord's smart enough to draw the right conclusion. "It cannot be," he murmurs. But he doesn't explain why not, just shaking his head and expelling a heavy breath. "If that is so, then I suppose you are invoking the ancient promises I made to Odin."

"I'd prefer not to need to," Loki replies slowly. From the little Darcy can see of his profile, his face—like his voice—is carefully neutral. "But if I must, then I would."

"Very well." Njord gestures to one of the men standing guard at the end of the hall. "Protection, for blood of my blood. Vanaheim welcomes you."

Darcy's not completely sure she believes that, but Loki seems satisfied, at least enough to bow again and take the dismissal for what it is. Darcy takes one last look at the throne as she turns to leave, only to find Njord looking right at her. She flashes an awkward smile and a little wave, then hurries after Loki and Jane.

Somehow, she feels like they've just traded one kind of danger for another, but she doesn't know what kind of danger this place is, yet. It's almost enough to make her teeth ache with the tension of it.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim Castle**

* * *

Miss Lewis steps out of the guest chamber allocated to Dr. Foster, pulling the door shut behind her with an audible sigh. Her arms fall back loosely to her sides, and she fixes Loki with a very blue stare. "She's asleep. Finally. I think the realm travel was harder on her than she wants to show anyone." She grimaces, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose.

Loki, leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, inclines his head slightly. "It was… not ideal." Between the fact that he's still recuperating and the suddenness of the shift, it's actually quite impressive that he managed to put them anywhere in the vicinity of the city. But things are better this way, in one sense: while he alone could go unnoticed, Njord would eventually detect the Midgardians in his realm. Better to have presented themselves before him now, and formally asked for his asylum.

Miss Lewis looks back at the door. "I think I probably ought to stay here. I know the king or whatever his title is said we can stay, but he didn't seem too happy to have us. I don't want to leave her alone."

Her devotion is an admirable trait. She looks to be barely on her feet, and yet her first concern is for someone else. Loki hardly understands it, but he can at least do something about the more immediate issue. Concentrating for a moment, he produces a duplicate, which steps away from him and glances between himself and Miss Lewis.

"Do you believe she would object to being watched in this manner?" he makes it ask.

It takes Miss Lewis a moment to answer; her eyes have gone wide, and she steps towards the duplicate with an almost childlike wonder scrawled across her face. How easy she is to read. How transparent, compared to almost anyone Loki has ever known. She reminds him of Thor in that way.

Her hand reaches out, as if to lay flat against his chest, but passes through, the shape of the duplicate distorting slightly, like interrupted light or water. Loki almost imagines he can feel a ghost of the touch on his own body, and tightens his jaw.

"That's incredible," she says, and he huffs a soft breath, tilting his head to the side.

"After all you have surely seen, is it really?" It's a mere trick, bent light and just a tiny, thin thread of his own _hugr._ He's been conjuring them since he was but a child, seldom to anyone else's pleasure. _Seidr_ is women's magic, and not even the All-Father practiced it without a few skeptical glances. He was simply able to quell them in a way Loki never could, for Odin was in every other way a man among men.

But Miss Lewis smiles at him, and there isn't the faintest hint of reproach in it. "Uh, pretty sure this is the thing that's gonna keep Janey safe while I sleep, so… yeah. It's very cool." She withdrew her hand, expelling a deep sigh before glancing over her shoulder. "But, uh, before we do… how likely is it that the walls have ears around here?"

Loki feels his brows arch. "Very. But if necessary, I can block such enchantments for a time." The spellwork on the castle itself is ancient and powerful, reinforced over years and years of subsequent layering. Breaking it outright is out of the question, but dampening is well within his capabilities.

She nods. "Good. You wanna take a walk? Maybe find somewhere to sit down? I haven't been this tired in a while."

He inclines his head, pushing away from the wall and moving to stand next to her. Some inbred sense of manners kicks in, and he proffers his elbow almost by reflex. It just… feels like the proper thing to do.

She cants her head, and he sees a tiny smile curl her mouth, almost shyly. The youth in the expression catches him off-guard; he has known Darcy Lewis for a short time only, but in that time she has always seemed to be… _savvy_ , is the word. Perhaps even a little world-weary. But this expression belongs to an innocent; an ingenue, even. The simple pleasure in it is almost—

Loki's breath stills when she slides her arm along his, letting her fingers rest on his vambrace. Just over where his words lay. It's only for a moment, and then they're moving forward. He adjusts his stride to match hers easily, and in fairness for one of her diminutive stature, her steps are not the mincing, delicate things of women accustomed to life in gowns. She studies the architecture as they walk, and he watches her do it, curious as to what Vanaheim looks like through her eyes.

Once, he wouldn't have cared to know. He'd have taken her Midgardian heritage and upbringing to predispose her to awe at the majesty of things wrought by immortals. And perhaps there is a little bit of that, but mostly she is simply inquisitive, he thinks. Dampened by fatigue, no doubt, but inquisitive all the same.

Deftly, he steers them towards the courtyard gardens, and when they exit, it is to the mellow afternoon sunlight that precedes the dark, and the rapid cooling of a Vanaheim night.

"Isn't it summer here?" Miss Lewis seems to have noticed as well.

Loki hums slightly. "The seasons run long, save winter." He turns them onto a stone-wrought pathway, following the sound of water she cannot yet detect.

"Huh. How do they do that? Does this planet just orbit its star more slowly? Or at a weird angle?"

It's not a bad guess, considering cosmology as she knows it, but it's incorrect. "No," Loki replies, trying to recall the last time he'd had a conversation like this with someone. Perhaps never—he'd always been surrounded by people older and wiser than he, or if not, people who had no interest in such things as he could teach. "Vanaheim is itself steeped in magic. Over the ages, the work of Yggdrasil's greatest _völva_ and sorcerers has been imbued into the land itself. Spells of plentiful harvest and temperate weather conditions, among others. The rains do not come until Njord calls them from over his beloved oceans."

"Guess I can see why he's king, then," Miss Lewis observes, pausing to lean down and turn the face of a lily towards herself. It's an artless examination, undertaken for the sake of seeing the bloom rather than the romanticism of the image. Some of the pollen clings to her fingers; she retracts her hand and rubs her thumb and first two digits together. "That's true even in Midgard—whoever controls the resources controls the people. Even if there's always a million other tweaks and complications."

"Just so," he concedes, and they fall back into step.

Loki does not stop them until they reach the garden's centerpiece: the towering fountain made of gilded marble. It spills water into a large central pool, which is then carried by small channels to other locations in the garden, ponds for fish and ponds for seeing, mostly.

Miss Lewis lays eyes on it and snorts, halfway to a laugh. "Man, I can't get over how fancy everything is here. Someone was really trying too hard with some of these details."

Almost despite himself, Loki feels the corners of his mouth turn up. "My mother's brother designed this garden for her, a very long time ago. He is something of a—" Loki pauses, searching for a word she would understand. "I believe Midgardians refer to such individuals as peacocks. Very disposed to obvious shows of wealth and prowess." Of _various_ types, but Loki elects not to specify.

"Worse than you?"

He is almost offended, but a sharp look at her face reveals a sly expression he's sure he's worn more times than he can count. She's merely trying to get a rise out of him. He elects not to make it easy, sniffing faintly and lifting his shoulders in a show of apathy. "I've no idea what you could possibly mean, Miss Lewis."

She _does_ laugh then, a short, almost sharp bark of it. "Uh-huh. Sure you don't. Except according to every story I've ever heard about you, you do everything in literally the most dramatic way you possibly can."

He could try to deny that, but he doesn't. Instead, he shakes his head and sighs, dramatically enough to make her point and win himself another easy smile. He doesn't think anyone has granted them to him for so little since his childhood. He steps away from their joined arms, then, ignoring the way the chill seeps into the space she just occupied, and uses his other hand to gesture to the edge of the fountain. Miss Lewis readily interprets it and sits, folding her legs up beneath her. Loki takes a seat about a foot to her left, extending his out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles.

The magic takes only a few seconds to work, and then he is as confident as he can be that they will not be overheard. "Now… there was something you wished to discuss?"

"Yeah, uh… I guess I just wanted to know your thoughts about how safe we are here. What's happened today. I'm guessing the original plan was not to just show up on Njord's doorstep apropos of nothing, right? What should we be looking out for, here?" She picks at a loose thread on her denim trousers. "This isn't exactly my wheelhouse, but I have this feeling that us and Jane are all we've got to keep each other… I dunno." She grimaces.

"Saying 'safe' makes it sound like I think someone's gonna attack us, and I guess I don't know that, but…."

"Your caution is understandable," Loki replies. And very apt. He considers it for a moment, and decides that, in truth, she is right. He has been negligent in his guardianship of them, and it is only right that she know what dangers may or may not lie in wait. For that, she will need to know more of him than he has said, and he does not look forward to sharing it. But Loki is a pragmatist above all. It is necessary, and so he will do it. "If you are not averse, I would like to… inform you of some things that might help your understanding of the situation before we discuss the present."

She looks surprised for a moment, but then claps her hands together, rubbing the palms against one another. "Intergalactic politics and history. Maybe this will be my wheelhouse after all. Hit me."

Loki blinks, brows knitting. "Excuse me?"

Miss Lewis regards him blankly for all of a moment before understanding lights her features. "Earth expression. I just mean… go ahead and tell me."

"Ah. Very well then."

* * *

The response to this continues to overwhelm me (and give me new plot bunnies, which is unhelpful). Thanks, everyone.


	5. Ansuz

.

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 5: Ansuz

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.10.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Darcy runs her fingers along her knee, smearing some of the lily's pollen there. It's oddly sticky—maybe a feature of Vanaheim flowers, or maybe just a feature of flowers in general. She's never exactly tried growing anything herself and her experience with flowers extends to the fact that Thor brought Jane a few bouquets back in the day. Usually from other planets, because conventional is boring and Thor knew Jane appreciated the twist on the classic custom. Darcy'd been the one to tell him it was a custom in the first place, even though it's something she only knows from stupid movies and things.

But the new yellow streak on dark blue denim doesn't hold her attention for long. How could it, when it's competing with a voice like _his_?

"What do you know of… all this?" She lifts her eyes in time to see Loki gesture at nothing in particular, encompassing probably the whole _gods, other realms, alien-space-princes_ thing.

The truth is, not a lot. At least not a lot for sure. But she doesn't want to sound like a completely ignorant loser, so she makes a joke instead of stating it flat. "Well, I'll be honest, the sources I've consulted say that among your children are your crazy much-older sister, a snake, a wolf, and a horse—and that last one, you are supposedly the _mother_ of, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I'm working under some misinformation. If I'm not, though, that's totally cool. You can be a girl sometimes if you want. We are pretty awesome, so I can see the appeal. Not so much with the animal thing, but I guess if everyone is sentient and there's informed consent going on, you do you."

There's a heartbeat of just _dead_ silence, and she's worried she fucked that up somehow, but then Loki's face contorts, cracks, and he's laughing. Not outright heaving with it or anything, but his shoulders shake, and the sound is open and freer than she would have thought him capable. The grin splits his face, eyes lighting with some inner mirth, and she can't help but laugh right along with him at the absurdity of it. And the fact that for all she knows it _could_ be half the truth. Seriously, how is this her life?

Loki gets himself back under control first, shaking his head slightly and clearing his throat. "No, ah—no. I'm not even sure where to begin with that. It may be better to forget everything you've heard and start anew."

Darcy sighs out the last of her breath and leans back a little, curling her fingers around the edge of the fountain and feeling some of the tension seep out of her. Sometimes a good laugh is just the right thing. "Okay, but before I do: _are_ you a woman sometimes? Like I said, no judgement here. But you should tell me if I'm using the wrong pronouns or something, because I will totally fix that."

He gives her a little smile, then shakes his head. "I'm a shapeshifter, Miss Lewis. I have worn feminine forms on more than one occasion, but I am and always have been a man."

"Gotcha. Wiping all that other stuff outta my head now, if you wanna give me the right version."

Loki expels a breath from his nose, leaning back a little further himself and mirroring her posture, save that his legs remain stretched in front of him. He stares at the toes of his boots for a moment, then speaks. "Our cosmology is expressed in largely metaphorical terms, but it's an apt metaphor. Aesir children learn of Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, whose roots and branches lead between the realms, all of which sit at different places upon it. The tree grows from the Well of Urd, and it is at the well that the Norns attend, carving Fate into the trunk, and weaving it into the canopy."

It _does_ sound extremely fanciful, but Darcy's ace at unraveling metaphors, and she's always enjoyed doing it, besides. So she takes a couple of guesses. "So… the universe grows from the well controlled by the fates? That kind of just sounds like a creation myth." She knows enough to know that the Norns are the embodiment of destiny or whatever, and something different and apart from the gods.

Loki hums, lifting his eyes to hers. "The Norns did not create Yggdrasil—creation is an ongoing process, in which everything participates to some degree or other. But otherwise, you've the right general idea. They are the animating forces, in any case. It's important to remember, though, that this general pattern is mirrored not only in the whole of the cosmos, but in each individual entity within it."

"We're all animated by fate, and constantly growing?"

"Precisely."

"Huh." Darcy scrunches her nose. "I dunno how much I like that way of looking at things. Fate makes it all sound like… no one has any real control over their life. No one chooses anything."

"Some people believe that," Loki replies neutrally. "Others believe that fate can be subverted by will. That we are the sum of more than time and destiny. But I think we wander too far from the path, now."

It was interesting stuff, but he was probably right, if they were ever going to get to the things worth knowing about their _current_ situation. "Good call, Mischief. Carry on, then." She makes a little shooing gesture at him; Loki only lifts an eyebrow. She wonders if he'll stop talking just to be contrary, but he doesn't.

"Yggdrasil hosts nine realms. The one with which you are most familiar, the one that follows the cosmological rules Dr. Foster has devoted so much study to, is Midgard. As the name suggests, it is believed to lie somewhere between the roots and highest boughs."

"Right, but… not a literal tree, so… between what?"

Loki tips his head, setting his chin on his shoulder and studying her for a moment. "Death and eternal life."

"Oh."

 _Oh._

That makes a certain kind of sense, if she squints at it.

"As realms go, it is the largest by far. At the roots of the tree lie Helheim, realm of the dead, and within the trunk Niflheim, the world of fog, where reside the dwarves. In the boughs are Alfheim, Svartalfheim—"

Darcy shudders. "Dark elves," she murmurs, remembering her many near-misses with their invasion, and Loki pauses.

She realizes he's waiting for her to speak. "It's fine," she says, straightening up and shifting around in her spot. "Just… I was right there for that invasion, you know? Trying to help Jane and Thor." Darcy presses her lips together into a thin line, trying to banish the memory of the utter panic and desperation that all that had been. Somehow more than anything that happened the first time, that one had really screwed with her head. Maybe just because she was closer to the action.

"You saw battle," Loki remarks, his expression intent. She can't hold his eyes, but he continues when she drops hers away. "In my experience, that is many things, but merely _fine_ is not one of them."

She pushes out a breath. "Can we—not talk about this? You were telling me about the realms."

Darcy can't see his face, but after a second a hand appears in her field of vision. His hand, and in it is something plainly familiar. "An apple?"

"Conjuration," he replies. "You have not eaten in some time."

She finds it in her to look back up at him when he says that, a corner of her mouth pulling in such a way that she can't decide if it wants to become a smile or a frown. "Are you trying to make me feel better?"

He shrugs. "Interpret it as you like."

"You're trying to make me feel better." That's her favorite interpretation, so she runs with it, reaching forward and accepting the fruit. "Thanks."

Maybe replying to that would be admitting she's right, but in any case he doesn't, drawing his arm back as she twists off the little remnant stem at the top. It's fresh, not dried like the ones at the supermarket. Like he _conjured_ it right off an actual tree somewhere. She bites into it at the same moment he resumes speaking, the tart flavor bursting over her tongue.

"Muspelheim and Jotunheim, the worlds of the fire and… frost giants." The easy recitation lapses for a second, but it's gone so quickly Darcy doesn't have time to remark on it. "And then, at the very highest branches, Vanaheim and Asgard."

Her food goes down a little hard—she doesn't chew enough before swallowing, too interested in asking questions. "So—gods at the top, dead people at the bottom, everyone else between?"

"More or less."

"Were Vanaheim and Asgard ever at war?" With a situation like that, it seems obvious to her that it would have happened at some point.

Loki looks the faintest bit surprised, then nods. "For ages. It was ended by the marriage of my mother to Odin. She was Vanir by origin. Njord's only daughter."

"Wait, wait, wait." Darcy remembers something about this from her reading. "I thought that lady's name was Freyja? Wasn't your mom Frigga?" Though come to think of it, those two names are awfully similar.

"A minor dialect issue. They are one and the same."

Well, that answers that, then. "Okay, so… Njord here is actually like your grandfather, then? He didn't really act like it."

"No," Loki replies, grimacing. "He wouldn't."

"Why not? Falling-out?"

He's quiet, too quiet for what she'd thought would be kind of straightforward. But then she remembers that there was some serious family drama on Thor's end, too. She never found out exactly what it was all about, but she's gleaned that Loki was always kind of the black sheep, and maybe that's part of the issue here.

"Hey—you don't have to tell me. Family stuff is… well, if you want to keep it to yourself, I'll understand."

"I'm…" he pauses; she can almost _feel_ the hesitation in it. "Adopted."

Darcy's lips part to say something immediately, but then she reconsiders it. Ordinarily, she'd wonder why that's such a huge deal—people adopt and get adopted all the time. There's nothing weird about it, nothing that would warrant that kind of caution just to say. Hell, there were times in her life she'd have given anything in the _world_ to be able to say the same.

But this isn't middle America, and even there, not all adoptions are the same. Something about the circumstances or Loki's history or something very clearly makes this a Big Deal, and the more she thinks about it, the more she believes she might understand some of the reasons why. To be an adopted kid is one thing. To be an adopted _prince_ would be another. Because thrones are inherited by _birthright_.

Something clicks. "They didn't tell you, did they?" Obviously he knows _now_ , but if he can't talk about it openly even at present, that means he never learned how, which means it's a pretty good bet that he didn't learn about his status while he was still a kid. That he grew up thinking he was something other than what he is.

"I learned less than a decade ago."

She's not completely sure of how everything translates into immortal-time, but she can't help but think a decade is probably just the blink of an eye to someone like him. It shifts her perspective a little, like tilting her head to the left. "Wow. That's… no offense, but that's bullshit."

Loki doesn't quite know what to do with that statement, from the look on his face, and Darcy doesn't either, so she offers him the apple back. "Want some? You did some nice work here, Mischief; it's tasty." She has no idea why she's extending it, except it feels like the only gesture she can really make and she wants to do _something_.

It hangs there for a moment, her arm extended into the foot or so of space between them. For a second Darcy thinks she's been too weird—why would he want to share a piece of fruit with her when he could just magic up another one if he wanted? But then he moves, quickly as though to prevent her from withdrawing. His hand closes over her wrist, delicate like he might break it if he used any pressure. Maybe he would. In her limited experience, gods are crazy-strong.

Darcy's pulse kicks up; she can almost feel the exact moment her brain chemistry registers the contact, and she'd swear to Thor right there that everything about the moment sharpens, comes into almost painful focus. Her breath trembles softly as she exhales. His eyes are so, _so_ green. She wants to say something, anything to break the still of the moment, but all the thoughts scatter from her brain and she's left just… waiting. Waiting for something to happen.

Using his hold on her to lift her arm just a fraction, Loki lowers his head, not breaking eye contact for even a moment, and sinks his teeth into the apple.

It shouldn't be erotic. It shouldn't be anything. But all she can imagine then is those perfect, white teeth sinking into the juncture of her shoulder and neck, and for some reason she cannot decipher, that thought—of Loki biting her, leaving a subtle arch of pale pink marks on the freckled expanse of her skin—sends a jolt through her.

As if it bounced from her to him, he releases her quickly, pulling back and turning away. Darcy feels her face burning and clears her throat, setting the remains of the apple down on the fountain's edge. "A-anyway. Thank you for, um, telling me. I'm sure there's a lot more I need to know, but for now, uh…" She fumbles for some way to end that.

She needn't. "Yes," Loki agrees, something tight in his tone. He's still looking away, though, so she can't figure out what. "The hour is getting late. It would be best to resume at another time."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.15.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Long strides carry Sif down the passage, smooth marble passing under her heavy boots. The breeze stirred by her passage is a welcome relief; at this time in the season, some days are hot even for a half-cloak and light armor, and she has been traveling for many days. Only now did King Njord release her from his audience chamber, giving her the opportunity to chase down this rumor.

Sharp dark eyes scan the corridor, as though the tricker's presence will make itself obvious in some change of décor. Something that sticks out as incongruous with her memory. Not an entirely outlandish thought, if they were still children, but many years have passed since Loki's idea of trickery was animating the images woven into the Queen's tapestries or changing the color of a young girl's hair.

Now she knows the more dangerous side of his capabilities, and Sif is not so much a fool as to underestimate the same man twice.

"Damn it," she hisses under her breath. "Where are you?"

"Looking for me?"

Sif stops abruptly, the toe of her boot scuffing the floor, and whirls, hand halfway to her sword already. Loki stands behind her as though he'd melted from the very shadows themselves. His hands are raised to shoulder height, palms facing outward. His face is shuttered, unreadable. Or perhaps she simply does not have the same skill she once did at the task.

Her arm falls awkwardly to her side; she brushes it along the side of her mail-clad leg as though that is what she meant to do with the motion the entire time. From the way his eyes follow, she knows _he_ knows it was not.

She hasn't taken kindly to being snuck up on since the hair incident, come to think of it.

"What makes you think that?" she replies stiffly. "Your overinflated sense of your own importance? Or were you spying on the audience chamber?"

Loki only shrugs. "There are only two other guests in this wing, presently. Both of them are here with me."

Sif feels the muscles in her jaw clench hard enough that her teeth creak. Consciously, she forces herself to relax, to uncoil just enough to loosen it and speak. "Is it true?"

A breath passes from his nose, long and weary, and she knows the answer even before he gives it. Not so unreadable now. "Which part?"

It may have been some time since they saw each other last, not since he was feigning the guise of Odin, apparently. Even then, she was seldom summoned before the All-Father. But Sif has centuries of acquaintance and proxy-friendship to fall back on, and the knowledge of his turns of phrase and tendencies to match. The answer to her question is yes, but he is delivering it _gently_.

She cannot stand that. Has never been able to abide it.

"Tell me true, Laufeyson: he is dead? His—Foster is here?" News travels slowly between realms, in particular since Heimdall ceased to monitor the branches from his place on the Bifrost. But she knows of the destruction of Asgard the place. Three days ago, word reached her about the destruction of Asgard the _people_ , and Sif cannot believe she is the only one left.

Well, she and Thor's half-Midgardian children, it seems. She's never quite understood the fuss abut Soulmates.

To his credit—little as she is willing to give him—Loki drops his arms, straightens, and stops pretending to harmlessness. "Yes."

It's a moment of weakness, but Sif closes her eyes even with him standing right there. She will take it, for it is a much smaller thing than the turmoil that rages beneath it. She has never had much use for her heart, but that means little. She still has one. And now she is sure she knows how it feels to have one broken. A death rattle, really, for a hope that was born half-alive at best. Stymied always by the pretty golden words etched into Thor's left arm.

But she has lost more than that, and the tiny moment of weakness is all she allows herself before she draws in a bracing breath. Her eyes snap open and fix upon the liesmith. She had already decided that if he spoke against his nature and told the truth, then she would speak _with_ hers and do the same. Part of a promise to herself, one she will keep if it kills her.

"Then you should know. Baldr has returned."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.15.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

"Seriously, Janey, you've gotta see it. It makes the one from Beauty and the Beast look like peanuts!" Darcy floofs Jane's skirt a few times to make it lay right, figuring that if they are really going all in on this Vanaheim wardrobe thing, she might as well get her 'saucy handmaiden to a princess' merit badge. And if Jane isn't a princess in this scenario, then Darcy didn't know who would qualify.

Jane purses her lips, smoothing a few wrinkles Darcy had created. She never claimed she'd be a _good_ handmaiden. The dress— _gown_ , it's totally fancy enough to be a gown—is a soft amber color, little metallic hints in the thread lending it an almost liquid shine. Despite being found in the guest room's closet, it seems to fit Jane just about perfectly. Apparently, this is a surprise to Jane, who confessed that Asgardian women seemed to be on average a lot taller than her.

Apparently not so with Vanir women, or else the closet is magic. Actually, Darcy figures that's a possibility. She tugs a little at Jane's sleeves, mostly pointlessly, but she's enjoying the change of pace. Jane has been understandably down for a while now, but Darcy's slowly trying to get her to embrace the situation and enjoy the aspects of it that can be enjoyed, like fancy princess clothes and the abso-freaking-lutely _amazing_ library. Maybe they'll even be able to get into that observatory tower on the other side of the castle; she's seen Jane eyeing it out the window at breakfast sometimes.

Jane rolls her eyes at all of Darcy's fussing, but then shoots her a sidelong look. "Okay, fine. I'll go with you. I'll even do it dressed like this. But only if you wear a silly dress, too." She crosses her arms, ruining any attempt to make the sleeves lay any certain way, the triumphant smile suggesting she's just won some kind of argument.

"Uh, Jane, I think you're missing something obvious here."

Jane arches an eyebrow. The dress would make it look imperious, if she weren't still so… Jane. "What am I missing?"

Darcy gestures between them. "We're not exactly built the same, bosslady. If these dresses are made for someone of your size, they won't fit me."

She wouldn't say she has body image issues, exactly. It's more that the idea of wearing flashy and/or form-fitting things induces a certain kind of… anxiety. Hence the baggy sweaters and thick-knit cardigans.

Jane knows this, and think it's ridiculous, but she's always been careful not to force anything. "Darce… everyone here dresses like this. You draw more attention in your jeans than you will in a dress. And I think the closet's probably magic, so I bet we could just… I don't know, _ask_ it for something for you." She seems intrigued by the possibility, and Darcy recognizes an oncoming experiment when she sees one.

But it's mostly because she's right about the other thing that Darcy eventually concedes. Lo and behold, when they shut the closet door and _ask_ it to help them dress her, there's completely different stuff inside when they open it again.

"Okay… that was kind of cool." The sheer selection of things is daunting, though. Colors, styles… she's glad the Vanir don't seem to favor corsets or anything. Maybe they're advanced enough to get that crushing a woman's ribcage for the sake of a cleaner line isn't exactly respectful. Even if Darcy knew a few girls in high school who rocked them with platform boots. Never her part of the scene.

She reaches into the closet, fingering through a couple of the garments before she alights on a deep green one. "Do you think green's actually Loki's favorite color, or does he just wear a lot of it because it goes with his eyes?"

There's a weirdly-long silence, and when Darcy leans back out of the closet to meet Jane's eyes, she finds her friend wearing a knowing, melancholy expression.

Shit. "Uh… that wasn't what you think it was, Jane. Just normal, boring speculation. Like when I asked you if any of Thor's friends made hammer jokes about, you know." She's maybe not helping her case, and feels a momentary flash of guilt for bringing up Thor in the first place, but Jane takes it well.

Mostly by looking really, really unconvinced. "Uh-huh. Why don't you try the green and find out? Thor always had this thing about red." Jane shrugs.

Darcy picks an inoffensive, plain blue dress from the back of the closet.

Jane does her a solid and pretends it's for comfort like she says it is.

* * *

They're two blissful hours into their field trip to the Library of Awesomeness when something changes.

Darcy's just pulled a new book down off the shelf. It's in a language she can't read, but that almost doesn't matter, because the sweet smell of lignin is perfect—a grassy note with something deeper. Vanilla and coffee, maybe. She cracks it open and unapologetically sniffs, drawing in a long breath.

A deep chuckle behind her make her straighten, snapping the book shut and whirling. The man—god? Probably god—laughing at her is closer than she expected, and tall. Darcy's eyes widen; she takes a half-step backwards by reflex.

Something on her face apparently surprises him, if the brief shock in his expression is any indicator. It's swiftly chased by something more deliberate, intent.

He's… well, Darcy's not exactly a connoisseur of the human(oid) form or anything, all her insinuations to the contrary aside. But it doesn't take one to call him handsome—it sort of hits her in the face with how obvious it is. He's golden, from the silky curls of his hair to the honey tone of his skin. His eyes are different, though—almost citrine, she'd say. Something lighter and clearer than amber, with a touch of elemental fire. Her breath leaves her in a gust.

"That is not the way people typically enjoy the wonders of the Archive," he notes, and his voice has a lyrical quality to it. Is it weird to say it reminds her of a harp? Because it kind of does.

Darcy furrows her brows at him. "I've been accused of being a lot of things, dude, but typical isn't one of them." She sets her hands on her hips, which is kind of awkward since one of them is still holding the book, but whatever. She makes it work. Maybe.

"So it seems." He almost looks… perturbed? But just like the surprise, it passes quickly. "Forgive me, my lady, for I have neglected my manners." He places one hand over his heart, atop the elaborate embroidered tunic he's wearing, and bows slightly.

That's really weird. Darcy doesn't think anyone's bowed to her in her entire life. Maybe this guy doesn't know she's from Midgard? It's hard to believe she blends in that well, though, dress or no dress.

"My name is Baldr, of Asgard."

* * *

So caveat here: I am totally all for gender-fluid comics!Loki. But MCU!Loki doesn't seem to share quite the same level of fluidity, so I've interpreted him a little differently here. His gender identity remains the same, but he has no problem taking non-male forms when they suit the situation.

Anyhow, sorry for how long this chapter took. I try to write at least a little every day, but some days it ends up being _really_ a little!


	6. Thurisaz

.

* * *

 _The Runic Edda_

Chapter 6: Thurisaz

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.15.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Jane purses her lips, observing Darcy and their unexpected guest from the corner of her eye. There's something more than a little odd about this—in the time they've been here, few of the Vanir have approached either of them directly, preferring to observe from a distance and then whisper to each other in voices too low to hear. It's not that Jane doesn't know what they're saying. She just doesn't care. She doesn't expect anyone to understand what she and Thor have— _had_. She doesn't expect their respect, even if she knows she deserves it. She's Midgardian, and that's enough for most of them to decide how they feel about her before she's spoken a word.

But Darcy… Darcy's different. Jane knows loneliness when she sees it, knows what someone looks like when they want so much to be liked. Loved. Darcy hides it as well as she can between her brazen confidence and smart mouth, but inside she's exactly like Jane used to be: eager to please, and almost desperate for someone's regard. She needs the validation.

And there's no denying what the attention of an attractive stranger can do for one's ego, but… Jane tilts her head slightly to get a better grip on the scene in front of her. The man has one hand on a shelf above his head, leaning slightly forward and down into Darcy's space. She's halfway into a step away, weight back on the toes of her rear foot, but something won't let her complete the step. Is she second-guessing her discomfort? Jane thinks she must be. Her smile looks genuine enough, but there's a tension in her shoulders. They're speaking too low for their words to carry all the way to Jane.

If it were just harmless flirtation, as his body language seems to suggest, Jane would leave it be. It's none of her business to police that. But the fragmentary evidence of Darcy's unwillingness to be there moves her, and Jane taken in a deep breath, pushing away from the table she's leaned over and straightening. Her back twinges, and she momentarily laments the ongoing aches of pregnancy before straightening her spine and taking a step towards the pair.

Before she can so much as utter a word, the heavy doors to the library fly open, and in stride Loki and—Sif? Jane's fairly sure that's her name, the warrior-woman of Asgard who was among Thor's closest friends.

Jane's little bad feeling about this becomes a very _obvious_ bad feeling, and she nods wordlessly to where Darcy and that man are talking. Loki's face contorts; Jane's alarmed to see something like actual _fear_ pass across it. But then the two of them are moving, and the noise of their approach breaks Darcy away from the conversation first. She swings to greet the newcomers, a subtle smile stealing over her face for a split second.

The direction she's facing means she can't see the way the man's expression twists into a scowl, darkening his halcyon features until a spike of apprehension spears through Jane's heart.

Loki and Sif see it, too, and the latter's hand hovers uncertainly near her sword. That clues Darcy in to the fact that something is wrong, and she shifts towards Loki and Jane instinctively, whirling to face the man, whose features even out quickly.

"Uh… somebody wanna tell me what the hell's going on here?"

"Hel's the right of it," Loki murmurs. His body language is less outright hostile than Sif's, but it's a near thing. He remains rooted in place, eyes shifting rapidly from Darcy to the man. He smiles, but it's mirthless, sharp like a knife and cold like permafrost. "Uncle Baldr. It's been quite some time since I had the pleasure. Imagine my surprise to hear of your return from the realm of the dead."

The man—Baldr—smiles too, and it's all warmth and sunshine. Against her will, almost, Jane feels her body relax. The goldenness of him reminds her of… what does it remind her of? Her thoughts are slow, fuzzed, dragging like the difference between motion in water and motion in air. Something… something's—

Darcy hisses softly on her exhale, and all at once the pressure lifts, leaving Jane once more with clarity. What on Earth…?

"None of that, thank you," Loki says, tone tinged with bitterness.

Baldr lifts his shoulders in a shrug, the very picture of innocent confusion. "I've no idea what you intend with such words, nephew." The title is given such a delicate emphasis Jane almost misses it.

Loki clearly does not. "What are you doing here?"

Picking something off his sleeve with utter disinterest, Baldr hums. "Considering my recent liberation, I thought it only meet to reacquaint myself with the remaining realms. I was not expecting to find so many intact."

Loki grimaces, then turns to regard Jane and the others over his shoulder. Silently, he jerks his head towards the door. Jane's arm finds Darcy's and winds tightly around it; she at least feels it's probably better to follow the implied instruction for now. But that doesn't mean she'll rest content without an explanation for long, and she tries to convey this with her eyes, meeting Loki's and holding them for a long moment before letting Darcy shuffle her out.

He nods, just subtly, as she passes, and she knows her meaning is clear.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.15.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Sif has been in this room before.

She remembers it perhaps too keenly for the amount of time that has passed, but just like every memory of her departed friends, it seems so much sharper now than it ever has before. She's been searching them too avidly, she knows, obsessing over them. Finding meanings in them that aren't really there, portents of what was to come. Here, in Loki's guest room at Vanaheim Castle, she remembers the "battle plan" meetings that she, Thor, Loki, Hogun, Fandral, and Volstagg held before the centennial war-games. Thor always got extremely excited about the event, and took it perhaps a touch too seriously, but then so had they all. Sif knows in retrospect that it's because all of them had something to prove, perhaps especially herself and the brothers, but not even the likes of the others were without a good reason to want to become the best at what they did.

They were not the Warriors Three for nothing, and the six of them together had been formidable.

She wishes, now, that all of them were together to cope with this. With Baldr's return. She is not sure that she, Loki, and two Midgardians will be enough. In fact, she is almost certain they will not be.

"Okay, does someone want to explain what the heck just happened? Because I am confused. And kinda creeped out, I'm going to be honest." That's the—Sif pauses. Her manner of dress suggests handmaiden, but she knows they do not quite have such people on Midgard anymore. She's not sure what to call the girl that is not Foster. She's never learned her name.

"A moment, Miss Lewis." Loki, at least, solves that problem, crossing to a small end table near the sofa in his chamber and removing the stopper from the crystal decanter at the middle of a fine silver tray. The scent of Vanaheim brandy drifts, sweet and sharp, over the space, and Sif nods slightly when he raises an eyebrow at her. She is not one to cloud her senses with spirits, but a bit to settle the adrenaline might not be a bad idea right now, either.

Loki pours, and then the glass floats over the space between them until Sif catches it out of the air and brings it down toward herself. The first sip is warm and pungent; she exhales quietly. "Baldr is the second son of Bor," she says, dark eyes shifting between the other two women.

"Thor's grandfather?" Foster asks, seeking clarification.

Sif nods. "He is Odin's half-brother. For a very long time, he was second in command only to the All-Father."

"Bet that changed when Odin had kids," Lewis observes, eyeing Sif's glass with something like envy. She clearly thinks better of asking, though; perhaps someone has warned her of the potency of substances that could intoxicate an Aesir or Vanir.

"It did." Loki leans back against the wall, his own glass clasped loosely in the fingers of his left hand. He swirls the golden liquid inside, seemingly not inclined to actually drink it. "But it was… complex."

"Complex in what way?" Foster lets out a soft sigh and settles on the sofa, pulling Lewis down next to her and forming a rough triangle with where Sif sits on the arm of a chair and Loki leans.

Loki's brow furrows.

"You might have noticed already," Sif says, feeling her lip curl with a familiar disgust. "The way he can… influence minds. It's part of his _hamingja._ "

"His… essence," Loki clarifies. "What you might think of as a god's portfolio. Baldr is the god of beauty and enchantment, among other things, and as such his will is difficult to resist for most others, especially those without the proper protection."

"So he's magic, but it's the kind where he makes people like him and stuff?" Lewis crosses her arms, looking about as disgusted as Sif feels. There's always been something about Baldr that rubs her the wrong way, but she is one of the few with that experience. Not many Aesir were ever able to find fault with him—not even when he did things they would easily fault others for.

"More or less, yes," Loki replies. "Few have been able to see past the enchantment. My own magic enables me to resist it, and others like Sif have had degrees of success doing the same with strength of will or exceptional insight."

Honestly they've never been able to explain Sif's resistance, though she thinks she knows what it is. She just hasn't ever shared the thought with anyone else. "When Thor's popularity grew even beyond his own, Baldr sought to harm him. To bring it about so that he was once again the All-Father's heir. Loki found out, and managed to convince me. Convincing anyone else was… harder."

Thor hadn't believed his beloved uncle could mean him any harm.

Loki shakes his head. "It doesn't really matter what happened, save that Baldr was killed, and consigned to Helheim as a result. The prophesies surrounding Ragnarök foretold that after the nine realms had been destroyed, he would be freed from his imprisonment and lead the other survivors to rebuild Yggdrasil anew. It is a sequence of events I had thought averted, since Ragnarök ended with the destruction of Asgard alone."

"But somehow Baldr escaped Hel anyway, and you think he's going to want payback for his death," Foster finishes, understanding dawning brightly over her features. "That's… that _is_ complex."

"If it were only vengeance I thought he wanted, I'd feel better about it," Loki muses into the rim of his glass. "But he was led to believe he would inherit all of creation, a brand-new world he might shape to his will, and instead he escapes Helheim to find Asgard gone and the other realms intact? He is a king with no throne to ascend. I—know a little of how that feels, and I cannot believe he will be content to visit his vengeance upon Sif and I alone."

Sif hates that he's right, but he is. For all that Loki has done, for all that he was the catalyst for the destruction of _her_ world—a small, bright world of six people and a warmth and closeness she will never know again—Sif understands that there are far worse things than him. And she knows as only she can that he _will_ resist Baldr, and that perhaps his is the only resistance that stands a chance.

Her world might be gone, but there are things left worth protecting in what is left. "We will need to figure out how he escaped Hel," she points out, and Loki nods like he expected her to say it. He probably did.

"And in the meantime, we will need to be very, very careful."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.17.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Being careful, as it turns out, is an accurate characterization.

Jane supposes this must have something to do with the fact that Loki is not eager to expose either herself or Darcy to danger, for obvious-enough reasons even before the Soulmark is considered. While she's not one to put herself down, Jane recognizes that she is inherently frailer than either Loki or Sif, and when it comes to physical harm, she's just going to have to let someone else take the metaphorical bullets in this scenario.

It sort of helps, that he's already taken the literal ones.

Jane knows—oh does she _know_ —that even an Asgardian is the furthest thing from invincible, but it can still be a strange intellectual contortion to simultaneously get that bullets are a minor inconvenience to a person and worry about their safety. For so long, guns and their inherent destructive power had been sort of the archetype of danger in her own mind. The ultimate expression of all the ways fragile human life could come to an early end. She imagines it's something that her long-ago ancestors must have seen in predator species, but something about a weapon is even purer danger. Few animals will kill without needing to eat, and that's predictable.

But people aren't, and their refined tools of death were therefore something Jane was always wary of. Now—all of this is so far beyond that it's almost laughable. Some part of her instinct hasn't quite caught up yet.

But even in being careful, they are not idle. At Darcy's suggestion, Sif has secured permission for Jane to study in one of Vanaheim's extraordinary astronomy towers. Though truthfully, not much astrophysics is happening at the moment. Rather, the tower, removed from the rest of the castle, is serving them all as a respite, a location more removed from prying eyes, and more removed from the protections that the Vanir have laid in the building's very stone. This apparently enables Loki to use more of his own sorcery, to ensure that Baldr cannot approach without his knowledge.

Jane is wary of this—she wonders what Baldr's motives really are, how he escaped death itself.

Some traitorous part of her wonders if it might not be a repeatable process. If others might not be snatched from the other side of life and brought back to this one. Somehow, she knows both that this question has crossed Loki's mind as well and that it is better that she not give voice to it just yet.

She eyes a book on the other side of the room, already dreading pushing herself out of the plush armchair she's settled in to read. She's had a bit of a rough morning, and wants to remain here, comfortable and not at as much risk of waves of nausea, for as long as possible.

To her surprise, the book levitates off the table and floats peacefully towards her, as though carried along a lazy river current. She plucks it from the air and brings it into her lap, shooting a glance to her left. Loki is bent over a worktable, studying several volumes of his own. For the moment, Darcy is with Sif, learning the layout of the castle and its grounds under the guise of a tour. Jane has the feeling Sif doesn't much care for her; she can't say she's looking forward to her own tour, least of all in a condition that will leave her even more delicate and slow compared to one of Asgard's mightiest.

"Thank you," she murmurs, the words a little stilted, a little thick on her tongue. They're still weighed down by things neither of them can escape.

Loki nods without looking at her. She doesn't doubt he's weighed down by them, too, but he's been nothing but solicitous to her. She can at least see it, now. Why Thor loved him so much. He's not the same person who led an alien army into New York City. Whatever else he might still be.

"I don't know that I'm going to be much help with this," she admits into the silence, eyes falling to the patterned cover of the tome in her lap. "I'm a scientist, not a magician."

Loki's mouth turns up at the corner. "I won't tell you they're the same," he replies, "because they aren't. But there's more in common than you might expect. Besides, I already think like a sorcerer. It's more beneficial to our collective efforts if you continue to think like a scientist."

Jane purses her lips, studying his profile for a moment. Her fingers trace a mindless pattern along the embossed leather beneath them. "Baldr," she says quietly, noting the way his shoulders stiffen slightly. "You were the one to kill him, weren't you? Is that why the rest of Asgard didn't think much of you?"

"Not merely," he replies after a moment's hesitation. He straightens, pushing away from the table and turning around to lean back against it. He meets her eyes, now. "But… yes. I killed him. A difficult task, if only for the fact that he was protected by very powerful spells. Otherwise his own arrogance would have done him in long before I did."

Jane imagines that couldn't have gone over very well. "Were you punished?"

Something darkens behind his eyes. "For a time."

"You did it for Thor." It's not a question. Jane knows it somehow. It doesn't erase the other things he's done, not by any means. But it's an insight. It forces her to step back and see the forest for the trees she's most familiar with. Of _course_ there's a forest—in a lifespan of a thousand years, there couldn't be anything less.

"And myself," he confesses. "At the time, I believed I was just as much an obstacle to him as Thor was. He'd have come for me next. Or possibly first, given that I could see through him." His lips purse. "I am not noble, Dr. Foster. I never have been. I doubt I could be."

Jane nods slowly. "But you're not incapable of love," she contends, finding herself strangely insistent on the point. Maybe she _has_ to believe it.

His brows furrow; she hears a soft breath pass heavily over his lips. "I would… like to think not. I would like to think I loved my mother. My brother. Even Od—my father."

"And you could love again." Jane presses because she must.

Loki meets her eyes unblinkingly for several long, slow seconds. But then he turns back to his work, sighing quietly.

She imagines that the breath takes the shape of _perhaps._

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.23.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

"Okay, okay. Let me see if I have this right." Darcy pushes the chair back from the table so she can't see her notes, pulling her legs up underneath her and wrapping her hands around her ankles. She's wearing her jeans again, because she's frankly afraid of tripping over dress hems and they make her feel uncomfortable.

She can deal with sticking out in the obnoxious way she undoubtedly does in her Midgardian clothes long enough to go to and from the astronomy tower every day. Especially since Loki and Sif never let her or Jane make the trip alone. She might have found that to be a pain in the ass under most circumstances, but she's better safe than sorry here, she thinks. Besides, Sif's cool, and Loki's—

Well, she's not really thinking about that right now.

Instead, she brushes the thoughts aside and focuses on the task at hand, not meeting her instructor's eyes. Understanding the full complexities of the political situation here is more complicated with Baldr in the mix, but it would have been plenty of work even without him. She has to understand the way the Vanir think of themselves in the world, and that means understanding a lot about their shared history with the Aesir and a culture more foreign than anything on Earth ever felt to her.

"So, uh, parts of the self. There's the hammer—er, _hamr._ " They sound almost exactly the same until Loki says them, and then the difference is a beautiful nuanced thing and her inner linguist wants to cry real tears at how he makes literally the most mundane anything sound like fucking poetry. It's the inflection, his delicate patterns of emphasis, and that really really nice velvety _something_ that just underlies his speech in general.

"Which is?" She can feel him looking at her, but Darcy tips her head back and focuses on the domed ceiling far, far above them.

"It's a person's body, basically. Their form, the stuff you can pick up on with the typical five senses. Shapeshifters can change their _hamr_ at will, but everything alive has one that's their own. Sometimes it's called the _líkami_."

She hears a soft rustle of fabric. Probably a nod. "Very good. The next?"

" _Munr._ That's basically the mind, or the… will. It's a person's accumulated knowledge and… life experience, I guess? Maybe some parts of the personality, too, there's kind of some weird overlap with other parts there. Baldr's magic works by perceiving things in the _munr_ , and acting on it, which is why you call him an enchanter. It's a specific subtype of the more general sorcerer, just like a shapeshifter is." She thinks she has that right, and drops her eyes to chance a look at him.

He's studying her again, she thinks, and feels a momentary thrill shoot down her spine. Something about being the subject of his undivided attention makes her feel—

 _Not going there, remember?_ Darcy stares back calmly, trying not to betray the way her skin prickles.

It's Loki who looks away first, clearing his throat and marking his place in whatever he was reading, closing the book over with care. "Two more," he reminds her.

"The _hugr_ is… like the soul, I guess." The neat analogy with the typical Western worldview definitely starts to break down around here, and so naturally she finds the explanations a bit more difficult. She hasn't been steeped in them since she was a kid, after all. "Or maybe the heart or something. It's the parts of personality not covered by _munr._ Kind of like… the core of who someone really is, deep down. It's the animating force of everything; I guess where I'm from, some people would say it's what separates humans from complex machines, though I don't know about that." It's probably a bit beyond the scope of the discussion to ask if a sophisticated-enough artificial intelligence could have a _hugr_ , but she has to admit it's an interesting question. "For people with magic, the _hugr_ powers it. Some diviners use magic that affects it specifically, to astrally project or walk in dreams, but that can be weird because dreams usually involve mind-magic too."

"And?" Loki prompts softly, still shifting papers around on his worktable and not looking directly at her.

Darcy furrows her brows. "And what?"

"What's the most famous piece of magic ever worked on _hugr_?"

Oh. Darcy shrugs, affecting a casual demeanor, as though the topic is not edging close to a line neither of them has yet quite crossed. "Soulmarks," she replies slowly. "Normally the _hugr_ is undetectable by people without magic, but because of that spell, it has an external manifestation. I guess it's like… part divination, part something else, because it makes a prediction about the future, but also kind of detects something about a _hugr_ as it already is?"

His eyes flicker back to her. "A reasonable supposition. In truth it is an extremely complex piece of magic, almost like—" he pauses, clearly searching for the right words. "The best metaphor is that it is an extremely nuanced algorithm, but what it does cannot be represented purely mathematically."

Yeah, she can make sense of that. For a moment, Darcy's caught up in the absurd thought of Soulmarks as super-effective Tinder, and the comparison makes her snort in a way that's definitely not dignified. She wonders how many people have really stupid pickup lines written on their skin. Probably about as many as the people who have it easy, with the other person's name being included somewhere. _Hi—I'm John Smith, nice to meet you._ Practical, but boring as hell. Surely everyone's got more to go on than "hey" or something though, right?

"And lastly?" Loki prompts, bringing her back to the conversation at hand.

" _Hamingja_ ," she replies. "Literally it means something like 'luck,' but it's more of a… different kind of essence than the _hugr_. It's sort of like a person's deeds and legacy and aptitudes and stuff. Unlike a lot of things, those can be passed on, or created, kinda. Like you weren't _born_ the god of mischief, it became part of you as you got up to shenanigans. Which, by the way, I really do want to hear more about someday."

She paused just long enough to take a breath. "You think one of the kids will end up being, you know, God of Thunder or something?"

Loki looks vaguely taken aback by the question, though she can't really blame him for that. It was kinda sudden. But after a moment, he frowns thoughtfully. "I am not sure," he admits. "It is possible, I suppose. But not all _hamingja_ are inherited in a purely ancestor-descendant manner. And inheritance events are… exceedingly rare in any case. I've little sense of how it will work, given all of those domains no longer in the living realms."

"But say they all _could_ be inherited somehow. If there weren't enough Aesir, do you think there'd be Midgardians or elves or whatever born with god-powers?" It doesn't seem that weird to her. As far as she can tell, gods are just incredibly strong, long-lived mutants, and there are plenty of mutants born on earth and elsewhere in Midgard all the time, as far as she knows. Maybe that's what's been happening all along—people have been inheriting random _hamingjas_ from the dead, and that's why no one can seem to make sense of powers in terms of genetics alone.

"An intriguing possibility," Loki replies slowly, "but not one I could confirm or deny." He sounds perturbed by this. Darcy figures he's used to having all or most of the answers when people ask him stuff. Insofar as they do, anyway.

"Hey, don't sweat it, dude. I'm just speculating here. It's a thing I do. Head in the clouds and all that." She shrugs. "I don't expect you to know everything."

His lips purse, but he does not reply beyond shaking his head. Darcy figures that closes off the topic for now, and scoots her chair back to the table. She recognizes the signs that a genius needs some time to think, and she has homework to do in the meantime. If there's anything undergrad made her good at, it's studying. At least she has a use for that, now.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.24.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

"So Sif, you're like… from here, aren't you?"

Sif glances down at Lewis without breaking her stride, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean, you're half-Vanir, right? And you weren't on Asgard when… you know. So I thought maybe this was actually home base for you." Lewis shrugs, and Sif can find no criticism in her tone, just curiosity. That much, she can deal with.

"My father's family is from the outlying territories in Vanaheim, yes. However… that this is my home does not excuse me. Hogun was also a Vanir, and he was there to fight for Asgard when it counted." She cannot hide the way that stings, and so she does not make the attempt, instead turning them down another corridor. Lewis has not been paying much attention to their surroundings thus far, and Sif believes she has taken a circuitous-enough route to provide a challenge. "Lead us to the kitchen."

Lewis snorts. "The kitchen?" When Sif furrows her brows down at the fragile Midgardian, she raises both hands to the level of her shoulders, as if in surrender. "Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly happy to know where the grub is, I just didn't figure it was priority one information, you know?"

Sif lifts her shoulders. "Few people think that the comings and goings of servants are 'priority one.' This means their exits are not the first to come to mind." The point, she thinks, makes itself: in the event they need to flee or hide, knowing the castle as the servants do would be every bit as valuable as knowing it in the way Njord does.

Not thats if thinks they will be running from _Njord_. He has little love of the Aesir even after all this time. Probably less since the Queen's death. But he is not unreasonable in the way some are. She only hopes that this remains true as Baldr unleashes more and more of his power.

One thing they have on their side is time, she muses, long strides keeping pace as Lewis turns them down a service corridor. The girl at least seems to have taken the lesson seriously, though they are currently not traveling by the most efficient path to the kitchen. Baldr can't just pull the entire court under his influence wholesale in a matter of days; people would notice something was off and grow too wary of him. Enchantment is powerful magic, but here in a court of witches, sorcerers, and diviners, he must be more careful with it than in Asgard, where people saw all kinds of _seidr_ as women's arts and unworthy of attention or fear. Vanaheim is far more aware of just how dangerous it is.

But that doesn't mean they have an infinite span of time, either, and the trouble is it will be hard to tell how fast Baldr is making progress, or even what his plans are. He knows, now, to be wary of Sif and Loki both, and it is a fool's idea to let him within a league of Thor's children or their mother.

A half-step ahead, Miss Lewis begins to hum. It doesn't sound like any tune Sif's ever heard, but that's not exactly surprising. She keeps it up even as they exit the service corridor; it's put them out in one of the many guest wings, though not they one they occupy. The sound follows them past many lavishly-dressed Vanir, nearly all of whom turn to stare at the strangely-garbed woman and Sif herself, who is hardly a common sight at court.

She feels the back of her neck prickle and burn; she knows what they think when they look at her, and holds her head higher by reflex.

"So you think you need to be excused for not being there?" Lewis looks back at Sif over her shoulder, one dark eyebrow arched.

Sif had thought she managed to escape talking about this. Most people would let it drop as a matter of courtesy. Apparently Lewis is not among them.

"My home was destroyed. My friends were killed. I was not there to protect them. There is no excuse for that."

Lewis makes a noncommittal little sound in the back of her throat. "Where were you?"

"Alfheim. Freyr is an ally of my father. They meet once a decade to discuss business." It's such a stupid thing, to have been doing that while Asgard burned. If only she'd known—if only she'd had the faintest _idea_. But Asgard had been stable; prosperous, even.

"Sounds boring. But your attendance is probably compulsory, huh? Are you the heir?"

Sif finds herself nodding. "Only child. Frankly I think half his aim in bringing me is to parade me in front of the lords of Alfheim." She can't suppress her disgust.

"Gross." At least Lewis seems to think similarly. As Sif understands it, Midgard has moved past this practice in many areas. Perhaps she is from such an area. "Seriously, you're like… a badass. Shouldn't people be like… falling over themselves to talk to you about… fighting stuff?"

Sif snorts. "My choice to pursue warfare rather than _seidr_ is unappreciated on Vanaheim," she admits. "And Asgard would not have much respected either one. I was… working on it." Not that any of it matters much now. For all her supposed skill, she had been worlds away when Asgard needed her, and now she is just as much a remnant as Loki. Certainly not a comforting revelation.

"You know," Lewis says conversationally, "I don't know much about how the realm thing works yet, but it sounds to me like there was no way for you to know what was going on while you were in Alfheim. And even if you did, getting there in time probably would have been tough with the rainbow bridge broken and all. Maybe don't beat yourself up so much. Just makes Baldr's job easier, right?"

Sif's lips thin. She'd been about to tell Lewis to mind her own business, but the point about Baldr is… salient. If she's less than her best, it's an advantage to him.

And Sif is _not_ in the business of handing victories to entitled bilge-snipes. Tightening her jaw, she nods sharply at Lewis, just once. Just enough to convey that she's understood.

When she looks up, it's to find her charge gesturing broadly at the entrance to the kitchens, grinning like she's won the war-games herself.

And if Sif's mouth quirks, just a little, she has a feeling Lewis won't hold it against her.

* * *

Hey all, sorry once again for the delay. Unfortunately I'm coming up on a project deadline, so updates may be slower for a bit. Thank you all so much for your enthusiasm and encouragement; I continue to be bowled over by it, and I'm so grateful for the feedback. I'm awkward as hell, and don't always know how to respond to stuff, but know that I read each and every one of the comments I get, and they mean the world to me.


	7. Uruz

_._

* * *

 _The Runic Edda  
_ Chapter 7: Uruz

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.28.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

"So… we need a plan." Darcy lets her feet fall from where she's pulled them up, toes touching the thick rug underfoot. The astronomy tower is comfortable, but in this moment, that's not necessarily a good thing.

The sudden proclamation breaks the silence that's settled over the four of them, each at their own tasks. Jane, Loki, and Sif are trying to figure out how Baldr's here and not in Hel, and Darcy's trying to catch herself up on the history of the Nine Realms as told by their more long-lived races. Some of the stuff is wild, but awesome and crazy and fascinating as it is, she can't even enjoy it. Not with this nagging at the back of her mind.

When they've all actually paused to look at her, she continues. "I mean, this thing we're doing is really important, I get that. But right now we're basically hermits, and that means Baldr gets to do whatever he wants with the entire government of Vanaheim, and we have no idea what he's up to, really."

It's not news to them, of course, but she wonders if maybe they've underestimated the importance. Or their own capacity to do something about it.

Jane settles the book she's reading down over her lap, furrowing her brow until a little crease appears over her nose. "Sure, but it's not like any of us are going to be able to get him to tell us his aims or goals or whatever." She wrinkles her nose, probably considering what those could possibly be. 'Mess with Loki and Sif' seems like a fair guess, but it's way too nonspecific to be actionable.

Darcy pulls in a breath, clearing her throat softly. "Actually, she I said 'we need a plan' I meant 'I have a plan,' but the thing is I don't think any of you are going to like it." She runs her fingers over the embroidered arm of the plush chair she's in. One of them is a little loose; she wraps it around her finger until it's tight enough to cut off circulation. A few tugs prove ineffectual—everything around here is built so much stronger, built for people who routinely exert more force than she has in the whole of her body.

"…what's the plan?" Jane's tone is cautious; and bless her, really. She knows Darcy wouldn't bring this up if she didn't at least think the terrible idea had a reasonable shot at success. Maybe she would have, once—embraced her extraneous starts and said and done extraneous things to go with—but they can't afford for anyone not to pull some weight.

The kind of weight Darcy can pull isn't exactly intellectual heavy lifting. Not of the science kind, anyway. But it might be something. "Baldr's used to people basically being stupid for him, right?" she asks, knowing full well what the answer is. She lifts her eyes, easing her hold on the thread, and resists the urge to chew her lip. "Why not give him what he expects?"

She looks at Jane, mostly because Darcy figures her boss is the most likely to support the plan.

"Absolutely not." The first response is Loki's, unsurprisingly, his tone hard as steel and sharp as jagged ice. She doesn't blame him for that.

"She has a point, Loki. It's not terrible." Sif's response is more measured; a quick glance reveals that she's crossed her arms over her chest and is regarding Darcy appraisingly.

She sits up a little straighter, scooting to the edge of the seat cushion so she can put her feet properly on the ground. Damn her vertical challenges. Everything in this place makes her feel small.

Maybe she imagines it, but she swears Loki's eyes actually flash when they flicker to Sif. "No. She has no idea how dangerous—"

She _does_ blame him for this.

"Uh, hello? _She_ is standing right here. And has an opinion." Darcy tilts her chin up, knowing it's ridiculous to try and make herself look any tougher in front of someone like him. He's more acquainted with both mortal fragility and godly strength than she is, probably. But her pride won't let her be spoken about like she's not even present.

"It's not—I know that." Loki seems to deflate a little, shoulders sloping downwards, though the tension is still there. He makes direct eye contact with her, expression troubled. "But you don't know him as we do. The risk is…"

Darcy sighs. It would have been easier to argue if he'd kept the sharpness and brittle bite he used with Sif. But she gentles her tone, too. "Look. We all know someone has to take it. We can't sit here in the dark or it's only a matter of time until he wins. He won't tell you or Sif anything in a million years, and he's not getting within a mile and three stone walls of Jane if I can help it. I'm the only option." She is also the best qualified, in a way. He'd expect the least of her, believe the worst of her most readily. Loki and Sif are gods, and Jane is both a genius and—more relevant to Baldr, probably—famously the Soulmate of a god. _They_ are obviously special.

 _She_ isn't.

Jane breaks into the conversation, eyes soft like maybe she's caught the direction of Darcy's thoughts. "Darce, are you sure about this? What if you can't fool him? What if he knows when someone's not under his enchantments?"

It's a fair point, but she's kind of counting on it not being true.

"Actually, that part I can solve," Loki murmurs. "With the right protections." He expels a breath through his nose, long and slow, and turns to Sif, some question there Darcy can't interpret.

The warrior drops her arms back to her sides and nods thoughtfully. "I can help, too. We won't send you in defenseless."

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 07.31.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

"So remind me exactly what this is going to do again?" Miss Lewis sits at the edge of Loki's worktable, her feet swinging freely back and forth. She is so diminutive that they don't chance to touch the ground, even when she the points her toes and sweeps them in lazy pendulum-arcs, swishing the linen of her iris-blue gown. She does not seem to favor the garments of the Vanir, for all he thinks they favor her. But if she is to go through with this scheme of hers, needs must. He does not complain that she forgoes some of the niceties in his company, however. The shoes, it seems, are just as disagreeable in her estimation.

He tears his eyes from the ripple in her skirts and replaces them on the diagrams in front of him. The spellwork is complicated, and it doesn't escape him that if any part of it fails, she will be in even graver danger. The thought sits ill with him, but he tries for nonchalance in his inflection, reluctant to consider it. "It should protect your against Baldr's attempts to manipulate your mind, and alert you when such an attempt is made."

"So it's not just something he does all the time? The enchanting?" She tilts her head to study his diagrams as well. While they're likely naught but nonsense to her, she squints at them anyway, likely matching some of the patterns to things she has seen in other books he's asked her to read.

Despite himself, he has to suppress a smile at her evident curiosity. "Bringing someone into his thrall is a complicated process. It involves reading them, discerning what it is that they… need, or desire, and then presenting himself as that something." Certainly not an instantaneous process, and more difficult the less straightforward the personality. Or perhaps only more difficult the more deviant from the norm.

"I guess that explains why it worked on Odin and stuff. Cause I have to say, I was not getting a very _brotherly_ vibe from him." Miss Lewis scrunches her nose, rolling her eyes in obvious distaste.

He wonders for a moment at the curious warmth he feels, in that moment. It is seldom that someone would disdain Baldr's company for his own, but these Midgardians did not even hesitate. "Yes, well… he would not have chosen that approach with you."

Loki knows what he chose instead. He just can't figure out why it didn't _work_. He knows why the effort has no effect on Sif—perhaps the answer is the same in Miss Lewis's case. He can't help but hope it isn't.

"Well, that was dumb of him. I could really use a brother." Miss Lewis, oblivious to the direction of his contemplations, frowns and pushes her spectacles up her nose.

Loki cannot help but want to follow up on what seems very much like a cracked door, half an invitation. He has always been curious by nature, even if the curiosity seldom leads him to satisfaction. And he knows so little of her, really. "Do you have none?"

"Nope. No family at all, really. Well, except Jane, and Erik, and then Thor." She shrugs, but her eyes fix on the opposite wall, something unreadable passing through them, like a faint shadow thrown from a candle.

"I… see." He isn't sure what to do with that. His complaints about his family—she must think him the very epitome of entitled fool, to gripe so about people who were at least around to love him, in the best ways they knew how. For a moment, something uncomfortably bitter rallies in him, a buried ember of resentment flaring against his heart. He's half-ready to defend his charges, even in the face of someone who has no ability to make her own.

But Miss Lewis turns her head to regard him, and she _smiles_ , genuine enough to crease the skin beside her eyes. If she senses his readiness to go to battle for his right to think himself once-wronged, she gives no indication of it. "Don't feel bad, Mischief. It's not like you could have known. My situation's not exactly typical for people on Midgard, I guess."

The ember snuffs out, leaving less than a faint curl of smoke. Loki shifts, his hand gripping the edge of the work table and squeezing. It is built to withstand the likes of Vanir, but he almost feels the wood creak under his grip. Could it really be so simple?

His lips are moving before his brain has caught up. "And what exactly is your situation?"

"I dunno." Miss Lewis shrugs again and pushes out a breath. Weary, perhaps, but he does not think it is wistful or melancholy. She pulls a bit of long, umber-colored hair forward over her shoulder and toys with it, her hands restless. "I was put into the system when I was too young to remember anything. Aged out of it and went to college. It wasn't the worst thing, I guess; none of my foster homes were like… horror stories or anything. Some of them were pretty all right. But… not family, you know?"

She meets his eyes directly, then, and he is struck by the vulnerability there. Now she is expecting him to fight. Or, no—perhaps not that. She is expecting him to dismiss this lack of hers. As he expected her to dismiss him.

He finds, as he studies her face—the slope of her brow, the perfect night-dark blue of her eyes, and most importantly of all the complete lack of artifice to any of it—

He could not. Cannot. And wouldn't want to in any case.

Loki swallows, searching for his voice and finding it only several heartbeats later. "Perhaps I do."

This is the part where he ought tear his eyes away from her. Look back at the diagrams. Finish the spell. It's important. It would be a perfectly legitimate reason to break this… moment. This thing that distends, stretches outward until his sense of time is no longer reliable, for it cannot decide for him whether what has passed is fractional seconds or entire minutes. Time is strung tight as lute-wire, and he wonders if there isn't the same promise of music in it, if only something moves it the right way. Miss Lewis is strangely unreadable for all her openness, and he wonders if she feels it there, too, pulled taut in her limbs. An odd kind of inertia that will not allow change but cannot abide its own stillness.

She pulls in a breath, the rise of her shoulders with it breaking the absolute stillness and snapping the wire. Loki realizes that he hadn't breathed either—and that it is oddly difficult to do so again, requiring more concentration than breath should, as though it is a habit he has been away from for too long.

"Anyway, uh." Miss Lewis clears her throat, color blooming softly over her face. He wants to know why, but resolves to do her the courtesy of ignoring it. "So the reason Baldr's magic doesn't work on me is because he assumed something about what I wanted that wasn't true?"

Loki considers this, then nods slowly, though his words are a bit more measured.

"Possibly. The more nuanced his understanding of the subject, the more effectively he can tailor his illusions. What he did to the overall Aesir population was present them with a hero of the kind their culture revered: an accomplished warrior with feats of glory to his name and the boldness and brashness they favor." Not that it took a mastermind to deduce such things about them. The Aesir had always been quite open about what they venerated—and what they reviled. And if he missed the occasional outlier who preferred something else in a hero, well… it hardly mattered.

"But to deceive others, who interacted with him face-to-face, he had to decide not only what he wanted to _be_ to them, but what specific traits would accomplish the end. He was different to each of his lovers, for instance. To Thor, he was an uncle and a mentor, someone who validated his natural inclinations and excused his flaws. As children so often want." Loki of all people knew the power of validation. Thor had known it often and potently, too.

Miss Lewis purses her lips. "But not you?"

Clever girl, she is.

"I think I wanted that even more than Thor did. But my own magic was inherent protection, and Baldr never understood me. Not properly. It never gained quite the same purchase. He knew my mother and father better, and so their _seidr_ was less protection." Not none—Odin and Frigga had cast off the enchantments upon themselves eventually, though not before Loki had been punished for orchestrating Baldr's death. Perhaps some part of it had always remained with the All-Father; it would be a tidy explanation for the undercurrent of bitterness that lingered after, but Loki knows that trying to make the explanations for these things too neat ruins their veracity. Much more than this lay between him and the man he is now willing to call _his_ father again.

And the chance to address any of it has passed.

But he is drawn away from the melancholy of that thought by Miss Lewis's hum, a thing caught somewhere, he thinks, between contemplation and outright amusement. "So basically you were able to beat him because you were a misfit and he didn't get you?"

It's such a succinct way of putting the issue that it sounds almost trivial. But her simplification loses little of its truth.

He shrugs, turning a page in one of the tomes as though they are not treading dangerously close to what has in the past been a personal… the Midgardian term would be _land-mine_. It is appropriate. "I suppose you could put it that way." He attempts to make himself sound diffident, unaffected, not particularly interested, and he thinks perhaps he succeeds.

But she is not so easily dissuaded from her course. "I like putting it that way," she says, sweeping away the delicate structure he has tried to impose upon the conversation. The subtle turning away from this matter and back to others, or perhaps the entirely _unsubtle_ deflection he just tried to make. "I like that you didn't fit into his idea of what you should be. That you didn't want what he thought you should want."

It sounds, Loki thinks, very much like validation. As alluring as it has ever been.

Or perhaps the allure has more to do with how she's looking at him, when he raises his eyes from the page and meets hers. For weeks now, he has watched her watch Vanaheim. Watched her intake and process all of the new information set before her in whatever form it comes: books, people, lectures, even the clues pressed into the architecture. And so he knows what it looks like when she is bored.

She does not look at him as though he bores her.

He lets himself imagine, for just a moment, that the way she looks at him now is different than the way she looks at even the most interesting of Vanaheim's wonders. That the keenness of her narrowed eyes, the angle of her fan of dark lashes, the way she's braced on her nearer hand as if to lean towards him—that all of that means _something_ beyond an expression of her natural curiosity. That _he_ —to her—is something beyond a curiosity.

It's enough to prickle his skin, to make him feel too tightly squeezed into his own dimensions, an odd disorientation that is as much giddy as terrifying.

"Sometimes," he murmurs, "I don't want what _I_ think I should want, either." And _sometimes_ is _now_ , because it is almost a physical pull, the desire that floods him. To take a step away from the spot at the table that is _his_ and into the one that is _hers_. To stand in the space between her legs and run his hands from her delicate ankles to her thighs, let the fabric of her skirt pool in her lap, just to feel the texture of her skin. He does not know what she would do if he did. But part of him wants desperately, suddenly, all at once, to find out.

"Yeah," she says, nodding like she understands exactly what he has said—and perhaps also some of what he has not said. "I think I like that, too."

He has to remind himself that she is not an enchantress, that she has not actually ensnared him and plucked the contents of his thoughts from his head. That she is remarking upon his words, and not the sentiments that underlie them. That she cannot possibly know the strangeness of what has gripped him, and certainly did not mean to endorse his preposterous fantasy.

And it _is_ fantasy.

Loki feels his face contort, his displeasure with his own internal difficulty manifesting in something physical. Miss Lewis, of course, misinterprets, and believes she has said something wrong, if the way she reels back suddenly is anything to go by. He wants to correct her, but also cannot, and so he clears his throat, resetting himself in what seems to be the same way she is.

"So, uh… how about those spells, huh?" she tries for a smile, but it is strained.

And he—well, the infamous Silvertongue can only nod tightly, and force himself to think of nothing but the preparations.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 08.04.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Darcy wakes with a start, sitting up and pressing a hand to her sternum. Her breath is way too fast, and she can feel the uncomfortable slick of a thin layer of cold sweat between the sleeves of her nightshirt and her skin. Shifting back a little, she leans her head against the carved wooden bedframe and tries to slow it down.

The nightmares are formless, but she's certain that they're nightmares, even if the details of them slip out of her mind like water between her fingers. She isn't sure what's brought them on—but this isn't the first time she's had bad dreams as part of… a stress response, maybe. All the anxiety she pushes down, surfacing at the one time she can't do much to control what goes on in her own head. Maybe that's a fanciful way of putting it, but psychology backs it up. She read an article once, or something.

Whatever the reasons they're there, they _are_ , and now that she's up, she can feel that falling back asleep probably won't happen. It's hard to tell what time it is; there's not anything on Vanaheim designed to mark the hours, except maybe the candles, which she's noticed are marked. But she figures the Vanir probably have some innate sense of time passing that she just doesn't, so all she knows is it's dark and Jane's out cold next to her on the other side of the boat-sized bed. That's good—last night Darcy's thrashing woke her, and it's better if she gets whatever rest she can.

Jane's starting to look a bit wan, even though Darcy takes every opportunity to stuff her with as much of the rich food they make around here as possible.

Pushing back the coverlet, Darcy turns, bare feet hitting the rug noiselessly. Not quite so quiet is her nocturnal search for pants—while her nightshirt is pretty big, raided from Thor's left-behind stash of Midgard threads, it probably doesn't count as 'decent' on a planet where people still wear gowns on the regular.

Hell, Darcy probably doesn't count as decent on this planet. In general. But there's less she can do about that, and she steps into her jeans as soon as her hands alight on the spot where she threw them over the back of the sofa on the other side of the room. Shoes aren't happening, but the floors seem clean here, so she doesn't really care.

In fact, in her haste to get out of the room and to the nearest available fresh air, Darcy forgets to care about a lot of things, like who or what she might run into in the corridors.

"Ugh." Thanks to Sif's lessons, finding the garden isn't hard, and she lets herself wander kind of aimlessly after that, until she comes upon one of the really still, clear pools that Loki says are for diviners. Apparently his mother was one, among her many talents, hence the presence of aids to scrying. Scrying. God, her life is a fantasy novel these days.

She'll say one thing for the spot: it's really chill. Serene, even. She has no idea how the magic works, but despite the brightly-lit city beyond the palace, light pollution seems not to be a thing here, and the sky overhead is even more clear and beautiful than the one in New Mexico, even if the stars are totally different. She's almost proud of herself for being able to recognize that. And when she gets tired of craning her neck back to look, she settles herself down next to the pool and stares at the reflection of them in the water instead.

"Lady Darcy. What an unexpected pleasure."

Darcy starts; she isn't sure how she didn't hear him coming, with how quiet it is, but the sound of Baldr's voice has her scrambling to her feet. She hadn't really planned to put her plan into motion in a situation like this, but she's going to have to act her socks off anyway.

"Lord Baldr." She pauses, then ventures what she hopes sounds like an innocuous, polite question. "Is it Lord? I'm sorry—all this is still really new to me." She doesn't put it past any of these people to think of Midgardians as idiots anyway. Not even Thor had a great view of them back in the day.

But Baldr smiles, the expression so mild it's impossible to tell if he's secretly laughing at her stupidity or just pleased by her presence. Maybe both; he seems like the kind of guy that could manage both at the same time. "I should just as soon have you call me Baldr, milady."

Okay, courtly, then. He's going for chivalrous and shit. Darcy can do this.

"I couldn't possibly, but thank you." She mirrors his smile with one of her own, a touch more simpering, but not over-the-top. It'd be weird if her behavior changed too much from the library, after all. "May I ask what brings you out at this time of night?" Fancier diction, like she's trying to be more impressive.

He seems to have been expecting the question, which—duh. You don't interrupt a near stranger in the middle of the night and not expect them to ask you questions about it. "You'll think it strange, perhaps, but I was beset by a most disquieting dream. I thought to clear my mind with the aid of the evening air."

That throws Darcy for just a moment. She blinks at him, her tongue getting ahead of her brain.

"Me too! I mean, uh… well, I also had a bad dream." She resists the urge to wince. Confidence, Darcy. Confidence is literally like eighty percent of anything like this.

Baldr takes a few steps closer, eyes on the pool. She's not buying that, though, not with the way he stops _just_ inside her personal space like he doesn't even notice. She's sure he'd back right off if she called him out on it, feigning distraction. Ad if she'd been anything but warned, she'd have given him the benefit of the doubt, too, but knowing what she does makes the same actions look very different. "The Norns work in interesting ways, don't they?" he says, brows furrowed. "Perhaps you would consent to speak with me a while?"

And she's not entirely sure if maybe this really is a work of coincidence, or some fate-entities trying to give them a shot at each other to see who can outwit whom. Maybe it is. Maybe it's something more calculated than that. Either way, she knows he's trying to take advantage of it. The air around him shimmers a deep red—he's trying magic. The color means… yep, he's going for the charm again. She can almost feel it press against her mind, a pressure to respond in a certain way, almost a shift in her perceptual field as her heartbeat kicks up an involuntary notch. The feeling is downright _bizarre_ , though. Probably not how it should function, from his point of view.

She needs to act like it's working this time. At least a bit. Though Darcy doesn't doubt people throw themselves at this guy on the regular—magic aside he's fucking gorgeous even for an Asgardian—she didn't before, and even if she could bring herself to fawn over him now, it would be too different from what little he knows of her. But she can drop some hints, for sure.

The blush is half-involuntary, more in league with the acceleration of her heart, but she'll happily use it. "Oh, um… all right. I think I could do that." She smiles shyly, but lets it drop almost immediately, as though she's somehow uncomfortable with her own reaction. That much is entirely her own artifice.

"Excellent." Baldr jumps on the opportunity regardless. It would actually _almost_ be flattering in some twisted way, if not for the fact that she knows this isn't about her at all, really. "Tell me, Lady Darcy, how did you come to find yourself in the company of my nephew?"

Yep. This is _definitely_ actually about Loki.

"Oh, well." She shrugs. They'd discussed this part, all of them. The goal is to make it look like she's the obvious outsider in the group. Like a wolf culling a deer from the herd, Baldr would go for the limping runt doe much sooner than any of the others. "I guess it was mostly by association. I'm Jane's assistant, you see. And after Thor died, we sort of… ended up with him." She rounds her eyes, utterly guileless.

Give a guy like this a Damsel Classic, and you get…

Baldr frowns as if troubled, studying her face with intent scrutiny. Despite herself, Darcy really has to struggle to keep her focus. His eyes are bright and clear, fragments of sunshine even in the dark. He almost glows, and it's not just the funny magic-detector Loki installed in her regular ol' human OS, either. "Forgive me if I overstep, milady, but Loki is not… the most pleasant of individuals. He has not harmed you in any way, has he?"

Bingo. Knight in Shining Armor(tm).

But damn, it's a really good thing she's over those and not in the least distressed, because if she were otherwise…

Darcy feigns a mild panic in what she hopes is a convincing manner, drawing in a sharp little glance and darting her eyes around, as if to find Mischief himself lurking in a nearby bush. "What—no! I mean, I shouldn't—"

"My lady, please. If he has done anything untoward…" Baldr takes another step in, reaching halfway across what little space remains between them. His concern is so earnest it's cloying; he's overplaying the role, and if anything that makes it easier for her to see past it.

She shakes her head, urgent and uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Lord Baldr. I can't—I should go."

He backs off, just a touch. Chivalry won't let him 'insist' much more than that, fortunately. "As you wish, Lady Darcy. But please. If ever you find yourself in fear, know that I would hear your concerns. I know little of the circumstances, but it seems you were a friend of Thor's. As he can no longer extend his protection, I would do so in his stead."

 _Yeah, I bet you would._ She doesn't laugh at him, but it's a near thing.

"I… thank you, milord. I understand." Darcy takes her exit, but pauses in hesitation, turning back over her shoulder to take the final glance he's probably expecting. It takes her a moment of lip-chewing indecision to force out a final, uncertain: "Good—goodnight."

And then she's off in a hustle, rolling her eyes when she's certain there's no way he'll see.

Maybe she can manage this after all.

* * *

 **Midgard Date: 08.04.19**  
 **Location: Vanaheim**

* * *

Jane wakes to an empty bed.

There was a time in her life when this would have been normal, when it would not have bothered her in the slightest. And in truth, what she shared with Thor never really got much chance to be a 'waking next to the one you love' sort of thing. The world always needed saving, and they both had parts to play in that which did not lend themselves to lazy Sunday mornings and gentle, languid sex and breakfast in bed.

But for the last few weeks at least, Darcy's been keeping her company, because neither of them wants to sleep in a bed the size of a boat and much too cold because of the emptiness.

Darcy isn't here now, though, and when Jane touches her hand to the dent in the sheets where she's been, it's only slightly warm. She wonders if perhaps her friend didn't also have a nightmare. Her own is vague now, indistinct and as difficult to grasp as water.

Rolling over onto her back, Jane pulls the covers up to her chin and stares blankly at the ceiling. Not that she can see much; the chamber is dark but for the sliver of moonlight peeking in through the curtains on the far wall, just enough to highlight her left foot under the sheets and cut to the vacant half the bed. She waves her foot back and forth, dropping her eyes to the play of light and shadow there, and knows she won't be getting back to sleep anytime soon.

Beneath the covers, she rests a hand on her distended belly, easing the slight discomfort she feels there. Sometimes when they kick, she worries they've already started on the super-strength thing that Asgardians have, and there's a very real concern that her Midgardian body won't maintain its integrity against such an assault. But Loki seems confident that this is not the case, and that for all the difficulties she will endure, that at least is one she need not fear.

"What do you think?" she asks them, because this is a thing she does now. Talks to her children when no one else is around to hear her. "Time for a stroll?"

She takes the soft kick as affirmation, and rolls herself out of bed, swathing herself in several layers of Vanir robes and some shoes. She's at least decent, even if she's aware this excursion would not necessarily be approved by those who now consider themselves responsible for her safety.

Jane tries not to let the restrictions rankle. She does not always succeed.

Perhaps she can ask Loki's double for an escort.

When she emerges from the room, though, she finds that the double is gone. In its place stands Sif, fully dressed but looking slightly disheveled. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair is faintly askew.

"You shouldn't be out here at this time of night." The disapproval is clear in her voice. Usually she makes some attempt to hide it. Perhaps she's too tired to spend the effort.

"Sif." Jane's too tired to put much effort into hiding how little she cares. "I know, but—what are you doing here, anyway?" That much, she thinks, is a fair question.

But Sif might not share the view, because she purses her lips, her eyes shifting away to an unremarkable spot on the wall. If it was an attempt at _casually_ refusing to answer, it absolutely fails. The awkwardness hangs thick in the air.

Jane sighs; she can't help it. "Look, I really need to take a walk, or… or something. Would you mind coming with me, if I shouldn't be alone?" Standing here uncomfortably is only vaguely better than laying in her bed, restless and fidgeting.

She thinks she can detect a bit of surprise on the other woman's features, but the more certain part is that she gets a nod. Tight, uncomfortable, but a nod nonetheless. She'll take it.

They walk in almost painful silence for several minutes. Slowly, because Jane can't manage quickly at the moment. Sif adjusts, though at times her step hitches as though she's forgotten she really can't take full strides as rapidly as habit dictates. Not unless the wants to leave Jane in her dust, anyway, and for all the tension here, she clearly doesn't mean to do that.

Jane decides that if she wants this experience to be more restful than strained, she's going to have to break the ice first. She tries for something innocuous, calling up what she knows about her quasi-willing companion. "How are your parents?"

Sif halts, blinks. "What?" It's almost harsh, but Jane thinks she might not mean it to be.

So she tries again, repeating herself right down to the mild tone of her voice. "Your parents—Ravdna and Dag, right?"

"How could you possibly know that?" Bewilderment and a trace of suspicion that time.

"Thor, of course." Jane wasn't sure why this would be confusing. Their singular point of connection to each other is rather obvious, after all.

But this only barely seems to clarify anything for Sif. "Thor… spoke of me? To you?"

Jane's brows furrow, but she thinks she might understand where this is coming from now. She chooses her next words very carefully, trying to stick closely to the truth, but not at the expense of kindness. "Of course he did. You were friends—he always talked about his friends."

Sif's head jerks in a way that's probably supposed to be another nod. "Friends. Yes. I suppose we were that." The flatness of the statement confirms Jane's hypothesis.

It's a strange thing to have to deal with, at a juncture like this. She's never known Sif well enough to know what her feelings are about Thor, and Thor himself either hadn't known about them or had downplayed them in his tellings. Probably because they _were_ friends. It isn't really Jane's secret to know, but now she does.

"…I'm sorry. For whatever that's worth." She isn't sure it's the _right_ sentiment, but it's the honest one, at least. Jane has never really been an expert in emotions.

Sif's expression twists into something equal parts frown and grimace. "What are you sorry for? His words were yours, and yours were his. Even I understand what that means. It is nothing to apologize about."

Something about that sounds odd to Jane's ear. "'Even you'?" She repeats the phrase with the right indexical change, but Sif's reason for using it is no clearer that way.

But the other woman shrugs. "Yes. Even a Markless."

That hangs in the air for several seconds, and Jane realizes they've both stopped walking. Sif is watching her closely now, body taut as a bowstring. As though she expects… well, Jane's not sure exactly _what_ she expects, but if it's anything like the way some people treat the Markless on Midgard, it's probably nothing good.

She expels a slow breath through her nose. "I see. Well, maybe I don't see, really. But… just because you have no Mark doesn't make your feelings unimportant." It's the closest either of them has gotten to really naming the thing that sits between them, thick and sharp and pungent.

"I…" It seems to almost ease something in Sif, unexpected as that is. She pulls in a deep breath, her eyes sliding away from Jane and towards her own feet. It's the most vulnerable body language Jane's ever seen her use. "I don't even, usually, with men. But he was—" The words stop as abruptly as they started; she's run out of them.

But Jane knows what she means anyway. "Special."

A pause. "…Yes."

"Then I'm still sorry."

It was hardly the dissolving of everything between them. But it was something.

And for just a moment, Sif's expression eased. "In that case… I accept your apology."

* * *

Deep sigh (tm).

Okay, so, this took a while. And the story is probably going on hiatus as of now, because the semester has happened and my dumb butt needs to get working on stuff. It'll get finished eventually, for sure, but I can't say when exactly that's going to be, so if y'all are bookmarkers or alert-setters or whatnot, you may want to do that so you know when new stuff happens. Sorry to suspend things here; I was really hoping I wouldn't have to, but that's how it goes sometimes, I guess.

Also apologies for any typos. I really wanted to get the thing out and am falling asleep at my keyboard here.


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